Principal Engineer, Core - Pinner Journeys

• 15+ years of industry experience in large-scale systems and/or machine learning, with a track record of impact in search, recommendations, feeds, or conversational AI.
• Proven experience as a Principal Engineer, Architect, or equivalent senior technical leader driving cross‑org technical strategy and execution.
• Deep expertise in at least two of the following, and strong familiarity with the others:
• Large-scale retrieval and ranking (e.g., learning-to-rank, multi-task and multi-objective optimization, bandits, RL for recommendations).
• Representation learning (e.g., embeddings, multi-modal models, dense and sparse retrieval).
• Search systems (indexing, query understanding, relevance tuning, latency/throughput optimization).
• Large language models and generative AI (prompting, fine-tuning, RAG, agents, safety/guardrails, evaluation).
• Demonstrated ability to define and drive multi-year architectural transformations at scale (e.g., re-architecting a core ranking stack, unifying feature platforms, evolving legacy systems to modern ML platforms).
• Strong product intuition and experience partnering with PM/Design/Data Science on ambiguous, 0→1 and 1→N product bets.
• Exceptional communication skills: able to crisply articulate strategy, tradeoffs, and technical direction to executives, peers, and broad engineering audiences.
• Passion for mentoring and growing senior/staff engineers; history of building strong engineering cultures and communities of practice.
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, a related field or equivalent experience.
• Prior experience in consumer discovery products at global scale (e.g., feeds, search, recommendations, marketplaces, or assistants).
• Experience building or integrating AI assistants or agentic workflows into consumer experiences.

Relocation Statement:

• This position is not eligible for relocation assistance. Visit our PinFlex page to learn more about our working model.
• We recognize that the ideal environment for work is situational and may differ across departments. What this looks like day-to-day can vary based on the needs of each organization or role.
• Some teams will need you to be in the office for in-person collaboration 1-2 times/quarter and therefore can be situated anywhere in the country. While other teams will need you to be in the office for in-person collaboration 1 times per week and therefore needs to be in a commutable distance from one of the following offices, [SF, Palo Alto, Seattle].

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At Pinterest we believe the workplace should be equitable, inclusive, and inspiring for every employee. In an effort to provide greater transparency, we are sharing the base salary range for this position. The position is also eligible for equity. Final salary is based on a number of factors including location, travel, relevant prior experience, or particular skills and expertise.

Information regarding the culture at Pinterest and benefits available for this position can be found here.

US based applicants only

$242,634—$449,541 USD