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Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md). --- # Principal Engineer, Shopping & Delivery Infra - **Company:** Pinterest - **Location:** San Francisco, CA, United States (Remote available) - **Salary:** $285,452.0 - **Contract:** Permanent contract - **Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, Software Debugging, Distributed Systems, Indexer, Information Technology, Legacy Systems - **Published:** August 2, 2026 - **Apply:** https://diversityjobs.com/main/sendform/8/8/28176/1/17788957?backUrl=%2Fcareer%2F17788957%2FPrincipal-Engineer-California-San-Francisco ## About the Role * Deep expertise building and evolving large-scale indexing, search, recommendation, or ads retrieval systems, including real-time and incremental architectures, relevance tradeoffs, and cost-efficient distributed infrastructure. * Strong technical leadership experience operating across multiple teams or organizations, with a track record of influencing direction, aligning stakeholders, and driving complex platform decisions to completion. * Proven ability to lead large modernization efforts such as architectural convergence, migration from legacy systems, rollout of shared platforms, or introduction of new infrastructure capabilities at scale. * Exceptional systems thinking and problem-solving skills, with the ability to connect platform design decisions to downstream product quality, ML needs, operational health, and business outcomes. * Strong communication skills, including the ability to distill complex technical topics for senior technical and non-technical audiences, and to drive clarity in ambiguous, high-impact spaces. * Demonstrated experience using AI to improve speed and quality in day-to-day engineering workflows, such as technical analysis, prototyping, design exploration, documentation, or synthesis of complex information. * Strong track record of critically evaluating and validating AI-assisted work through testing, source-checking, peer review, and sound engineering judgment, with clear accountability for final decisions and deliverables. * High integrity, ownership, and care in handling sensitive data and production-critical systems, including thoughtful use of AI without over-reliance and with strong attention to privacy, safety, and correctness. * Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, a related technical field, or equivalent experience. ## Description * Define and drive the long-term technical vision for indexing and retrieval infrastructure across Core, Ads, and Shopping, aligning architecture investments to measurable improvements in freshness, quality, coverage, reliability, and cost efficiency. * Lead cross-org initiatives to modernize Pinterest's indexing architecture, including advancing unified real-time and incremental retrieval systems that support high-scale, high-quality candidate generation. * Partner closely with engineering, product, ML, and infrastructure leaders to align priorities, resolve tradeoffs, and deliver shared platform capabilities that improve retrieval performance across multiple discovery surfaces. * Raise the technical bar for retrieval infrastructure by guiding system design, architecture reviews, and execution on complex platform changes that span document ingestion, indexing, retrieval, and quality evaluation. * Build shared platform capabilities such as common metrics, tuning surfaces, and debugging workflows that help teams understand and improve the tradeoffs between relevance, safety, engagement, revenue, and infrastructure cost. * Mentor senior engineers and technical leaders across teams, fostering strong engineering judgment, inclusive collaboration, and high standards for operational excellence. * Use AI to accelerate analysis, prototyping, and iteration on system design options, while applying engineering judgment and verification to ensure correctness, reliability, and quality. * Use AI to streamline repeatable work such as summarizing technical investigations, drafting design artifacts, and synthesizing platform insights so teams can move faster on high-impact decisions., * 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. * This role will need to be in the office for in-person collaboration 1-2 times per quarter and therefore needs to be in a commutable distance from one of the following offices: PA, SF or Seattle offices. ## Related Videos - [Optimizing Discovery: PostgreSQL's Role in Transforming GetYourGuide's Search](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1647-optimizing-discovery-postgresql-s-role-in-transforming-getyourguide-s-search) - [How to TDD in legacy code](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/309-how-to-tdd-in-legacy-code) - [Using AI Without Losing Your Skills](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/2045-using-ai-without-losing-your-skills) - [The New Org Chart: When AI Joins the Workforce](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100036-the-new-org-chart-when-ai-joins-the-workforce) - [Dynamic Entities in .NET: Building Low-Code Systems on Top of Entity Framework Core](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100218-dynamic-entities-in-net-building-low-code-systems-on-top-of-entity-framework-core) - [The Software Engineer 2030: From Coder To AI Orchestrator? - Patrick Schnell](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1825-the-software-engineer-2030-from-coder-to-ai-orchestrator-patrick-schnell) ## Related Articles - [How to Become an AI Engineer](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/331-how-to-become-an-ai-engineer) - [Navigating the AI Shift](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/629-navigating-the-ai-shift) - [Dev Digest 137 - AI'm not sure about this](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/485-dev-digest-137-ai-m-not-sure-about-this) - [Dev Digest 120 - Apple and peers](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/455-dev-digest-120-apple-and-peers) - [What is Software Engineering in the Age of AI?](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/640-what-is-software-engineering-in-the-age-of-ai) - [Stephan Gillich - Bringing AI Everywhere](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/489-stephan-gillich-bringing-ai-everywhere)