Sr. Staff Software Engineer, Merchants

Pinterest Pinterest · Consumer · San Francisco, CA · Monetization

Senior Staff Software Engineer role at Pinterest focused on the Merchants organization. The role involves leading high-impact engineering at the intersection of commerce platforms, catalog systems, and AI-native experiences. Responsibilities include applying ML, AI-assisted workflows, and GenAI to improve metadata quality, merchant tooling, and operational efficiency, as well as building and evolving ML/GenAI/AI-assisted merchant experiences. The role requires significant software engineering experience, a strong track record in commerce or related domains, and experience with ML/AI/GenAI-adjacent systems.

What you'd actually do

  1. Own end-to-end technical delivery for cross-team initiatives—from problem framing and technical strategy through architecture, implementation, rollout, and iteration.
  2. Shape catalog and integration systems for scale, reliability, and quality, ensuring merchant data is deep, broad, fresh, and actionable across partners, formats, and key signals such as inventory and pricing where relevant.
  3. Build and evolve ML-, GenAI-, and AI-assisted merchant experiences with strong validation and guardrails—for example, metadata enrichment, gap-filling, and internal tools that improve catalog health without compromising trust.
  4. Contribute to merchant onboarding and activation systems that span teams, creating streamlined flows, signals, and decisioning pathways that improve approval rates, merchant quality, and time to value.
  5. Partner where appropriate on organic attribution, merchant insights, and data-driven pathways from organic success to paid products, ensuring strategy is measurable rather than anecdotal.

Skills

Required

  • 10+ years of software engineering experience
  • Staff, Senior Staff, or equivalent-level IC experience
  • Building and operating complex production systems
  • Systems design
  • API design
  • Data-intensive systems
  • Experience building or partnering on ML-, AI-, or GenAI-adjacent systems
  • Strong communication skills
  • Ability to influence technical direction

Nice to have

  • Commerce, marketplaces, ads, or other adjacent large-scale domains
  • Leadership on cross-team technical initiatives
  • Catalog, integrations, or merchant platform experience
  • Growth, measurement, funnel optimization, or organic-to-paid ecosystems

What the JD emphasized

  • 10+ years of software engineering experience, including meaningful time as a Staff, Senior Staff, or equivalent-level IC building and operating complex production systems.
  • Experience building or partnering on ML-, AI-, or GenAI-adjacent systems

Other signals

  • applying ML, AI-assisted workflows, and GenAI where appropriate to improve metadata quality, merchant tooling, and operational efficiency
  • Build and evolve ML-, GenAI-, and AI-assisted merchant experiences with strong validation and guardrails
  • Experience building or partnering on ML-, AI-, or GenAI-adjacent systems