Staff Software Engineer, Core Retrieval Infrastructure

About Pinterest:

Millions of people across the world come to Pinterest to find new ideas every day. It’s where they get inspiration, dream about new possibilities and plan for what matters most. Our mission is to help those people find their inspiration and create a life they love. In your role, you’ll be challenged to take on work that upholds this mission and pushes Pinterest forward. You’ll grow as a person and leader in your field, all the while helping Pinners make their lives better in the positive corner of the internet.

Creating a life you love also means finding a career that celebrates the unique perspectives and experiences that you bring. As you read through the expectations of the position, consider how your skills and experiences may complement the responsibilities of the role. We encourage you to think through your relevant and transferable skills from prior experiences.

Our new progressive work model is called PinFlex, a term that’s uniquely Pinterest to describe our flexible approach to living and working. Visit our PinFlex *landing page to learn more. *

Pinterest's Core Retrieval Infrastructure team is responsible for building and maintaining the large scale, high performance recommendation and search system which serves billions of documents and hundreds millions users. This includes token retrieval, vector retrieval, hybrid retrieval and random walk based graph retrieval. These systems power all the Pinterest products including Pinterest HomeFeed, Search, and Shopping.

What you’ll do:

• Layout the technical roadmap for retrieval systems at Pinterest in keeping with the advancements in the industry and emerging product needs with Pinterest.
• Design and build large scale, high performance recommendation / search systems. And keep improving performance, scalability and stability.
• Drive cross functional collaborations with partner teams to add new functionalities to support all kinds of product innovations.
• Develop new high performance subsystems to support product innovation.
• Simplify and unify the serving stack to unlock faster product iterations.
• Mentor and develop team members technical and leadership skills

What we’re looking for:

• 8+ years of industry experience, ideally 2+ years retrieval infrastructure, 2+ years experience as a tech lead
• Domain experience in building large-scale serving systems
• Experience solving challenging, strategically-important technical problems
• Experience building technical roadmaps and executing on them through leading a team
• Experience working in the search (token and/or vector) retrieval space and/or knowledge on search or recommendation system

Relocation Statement:

• This position is not eligible for relocation assistance. Visit our PinFlex page to learn more about our working model.

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 every 6 months and therefore can be situated anywhere in the country.

#LI-HYBRID

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$160,520—$330,146 USD

Our Commitment to Diversity:

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.