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# Principal Engineer, Indexing & Retrieval Infrastructure

- **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:** October 1, 2026
- **Apply:** https://startup.jobs/principal-engineer-indexing-retrieval-infrastructure-pinterest-8843187

## 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.