Job description

About Pinterest: Millions of people around the world come to our platform to find creative ideas, dream about new possibilities and plan for memories that will last a lifetime. At Pinterest, we’re on a mission to bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love, and that starts with the people behind the product. Discover a career where you ignite innovation for millions, transform passion into growth opportunities, celebrate each other’s unique experiences and embrace the flexibility to do your best work. Creating a career you love? It’s Possible. At Pinterest, AI isn't just a feature, it's a powerful partner that augments our creativity and amplifies our impact, and we’re looking for candidates who are excited to be a part of that. To get a complete picture of your experience and abilities, we’ll explore your foundational skills and how you collaborate with AI. Through our interview process, what matters most is that you can always explain your approach, showing us not just what you know, but how you think. You can read more about our AI interview philosophy and how we use AI in our recruiting process here . We're seeking an exceptional Staff Software Engineer to join our Observability team at Pinterest. This role combines deep technical expertise in distributed systems and data engineering with a product-oriented mindset to build world-class observability solutions that empower our engineering organization. As a Staff Engineer on the Observability team, you'll be responsible for designing and building the infrastructure and tools that provide visibility into Pinterest's large-scale distributed systems, helping thousands of engineers understand, debug, and optimize their services. What you'll do: Define and execute the observability roadmap, treating it as a product. Understand engineering team needs and translate them into technical solutions with measurable impact Architect, build, and scale distributed observability infrastructure (metrics, logs, traces) to handle massive volumes across Pinterest's distributed systems Build high-performance data pipelines and storage for real-time and historical telemetry analysis at Pinterest scale Champion Best Practices: Establish observability standards and patterns across the organization, making it easy for teams to instrument their services and gain actionable insights Technical Leadership: Mentor engineers, lead architectural reviews, and influence technical decisions across teams to improve overall system reliability and performance Cross-functional Collaboration: Partner with SRE, Infrastructure, Product Engineering, and other teams to understand pain points and deliver solutions that improve developer productivity and system reliability Innovation: Stay current with observability trends and technologies, evaluating and adopting cutting-edge tools and techniques to keep Pinterest at the forefront What we’re looking for: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience Product Mindset: Demonstrated ability to work backwards from customer needs —understanding user needs, prioritizing features, measuring success, and iterating based on feedback. Experience building internal platforms or tools with strong adoption Distributed Systems Expertise: 7+ years of experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems with deep understanding of consistency, availability, scalability, and failure modes Data Engineering Skills: Strong background in building data pipelines, working with time-series databases, columnar storage, stream processing (Kafka, Flink, etc.), and data modeling at scale Observability Domain Knowledge: Hands-on experience with modern observability tools and practices including metrics, logging, tracing, and profiling. Familiarity with OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, or similar technologies Programming Proficiency: Expert-level coding skills in languages like Java, Python, Go, or Scala with ability to write production-quality code Systems Thinking: Ability to see the big picture while managing complex technical details, balancing trade-offs between cost, performance, and reliability Experience building observability platforms from the ground up or significantly scaling existing solutions Familiarity with cloud-native architectures and technologies (Kubernetes, service mesh, etc.) Track record of driving adoption of internal platforms through excellent documentation, UX, and developer advocacy Experience with machine learning or anomaly detection applied to observability use cases Strong communication skills with ability to influence stakeholders at all levels Contributions to open-source observability projects, a plus In-Office Requirement Statement: We let the type of work you do guide the collaboration style. That means we're not always working in an office, but we continue to gather for key moments of collaboration and connection. This role will need to be in the office for in-person collaboration 1-2 times/quarter and therefore can be situated anywhere in the country. Relocation Statement: This position is not eligible for relocation assistance. Visit our PinFlex page to learn more about our working model. #LI-REMOTE #LI-JT1 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 $177,185 — $364,795 USD Our Commitment to Inclusion: Pinterest is an equal opportunity employer and makes employment decisions on the basis of merit. We want to have the best qualified people in every job. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion or religious creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, status as a protected veteran, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information or characteristics (or those of a family member) or any other consideration made unlawful by applicable federal, state or local laws. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you require a medical or religious accommodation during the job application process, please complete this form for support. By submitting this application, I certify that all information submitted in my application and throughout the hiring process is true, accurate, and complete to the best of my knowledge. I understand that any false statement, omission, or misrepresentation may disqualify me from employment consideration or result in termination if discovered after hire.

Requirements

Must-haves

Define and execute the observability roadmap, treating it as a product. Understand engineering team needs and translate them into technical solutions with measurable impact
Architect, build, and scale distributed observability infrastructure (metrics, logs, traces) to handle massive volumes across Pinterest's distributed systems
Build high-performance data pipelines and storage for real-time and historical telemetry analysis at Pinterest scale
Champion Best Practices: Establish observability standards and patterns across the organization, making it easy for teams to instrument their services and gain actionable insights
Technical Leadership: Mentor engineers, lead architectural reviews, and influence technical decisions across teams to improve overall system reliability and performance
Cross-functional Collaboration: Partner with SRE, Infrastructure, Product Engineering, and other teams to understand pain points and deliver solutions that improve developer productivity and system reliability
Innovation: Stay current with observability trends and technologies, evaluating and adopting cutting-edge tools and techniques to keep Pinterest at the forefront
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience
Distributed Systems Expertise: 7+ years of experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems with deep understanding of consistency, availability, scalability, and failure modes
Data Engineering Skills: Strong background in building data pipelines, working with time-series databases, columnar storage, stream processing (Kafka, Flink, etc.), and data modeling at scale
Programming Proficiency: Expert-level coding skills in languages like Java, Python, Go, or Scala with ability to write production-quality code
Systems Thinking: Ability to see the big picture while managing complex technical details, balancing trade-offs between cost, performance, and reliability
Experience building observability platforms from the ground up or significantly scaling existing solutions
Familiarity with cloud-native architectures and technologies (Kubernetes, service mesh, etc.)
Track record of driving adoption of internal platforms through excellent documentation, UX, and developer advocacy
Experience with machine learning or anomaly detection applied to observability use cases
Strong communication skills with ability to influence stakeholders at all levels
We let the type of work you do guide the collaboration style. That means we're not always working in an office, but we continue to gather for key moments of collaboration and connection.
This role will need to be in the office for in-person collaboration 1-2 times/quarter and therefore can be situated anywhere in the country.
Information regarding the culture at Pinterest and benefits available for this position can be found here . US based applicants only $177,185 — $364,795 USD Our Commitment to Inclusion:

Nice-to-haves

Contributions to open-source observability projects, a plus

Application prep

Use the role’s language and application details while tailoring your materials.

Keywords to mirror

aijavapythongokubernetesmachine learning

Platform: greenhouse
Effort: quick