Pinterest is seeking a passionate and inquisitive Sr. Staff Backend Engineer to join the Pinterest Assistant team. This role focuses on building a visual-first, AI-powered companion that enhances user experiences across shopping, search, and discovery. As a technical leader, you will define the architecture and technical direction for backend systems, ensuring they scale reliably for millions of users. You will collaborate closely with various teams to shape the long-term technical strategy and elevate engineering quality across the organization.

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field such as computer science or equivalent experience
• 10+ years of backend software engineering experience, including significant experience leading large, ambiguous systems that power consumer experience as a senior IC
• 3+ years operating as a technical lead, driving the architecture and development of large-scale distributed backend systems
• Strong backend engineering experience in Python, TypeScript, Node or similar languages and ecosystems
• Experience building platforms or foundational infrastructure that enables product teams to move faster
• Strong understanding of modern model-driven systems and experience partnering closely with machine learning engineers on AI-powered products
• Strong leadership, communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills
• Track record of mentoring senior engineers and elevating engineering quality across an organization

• Define and drive the technical vision and architecture for the backend systems powering Pinterest Assistant
• Lead the design and implementation of the core Assistant platform including orchestration, memory and personalization, context management, APIs, tool integrations, and backend infrastructure
• Drive technical strategy, identifying foundational platform investments that unlock new Assistant capabilities while improving developer velocity, reliability, and scalability
• Partner closely with Product, Design, Frontend engineers, ML engineers, and Infrastructure teams to build a deeply personalized, multimodal conversational experience
• Shape the architecture for AI-powered applications, including retrieval, context assembly, tool execution, memory, and model orchestration
• Establish engineering best practices for production LLM and agent systems, including observability, logging, evals, safety mechanisms, rollout strategies, and incident response
• Mentor engineers, raising the technical bar through architecture reviews, technical guidance, and thoughtful engineering leadership
• Navigate ambiguity and make pragmatic architectural decisions that balance rapid product iteration with long-term maintainability
• Influence technical direction beyond the immediate team by collaborating across teams and helping shape Pinterest’s broader AI platform strategy
• Stay current with advances in LLMs, agentic systems, and backend platform design, and apply them pragmatically to consumer product development