StaffSoftwareEngineer,Observability
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“Staff Software Engineer, Observability at Pinterest. Skills: Distributed Systems, Data Engineering, Observability. Define observability roadmap. Understand engineering team needs”
What You'll Achieve.
build world-class observability solutions; empower our engineering organization; provide visibility into Pinterest's large-scale distributed systems; helping thousands of engineers understand, debug, and optimize their services; measurable impact; handle massive volumes; making it easy for teams to instrument their services; gain actionable insights; improve overall system reliability and performance; improve developer productivity; system reliability; keep Pinterest at the forefront; measuring success; iterating based on feedback
Industry & Context.
debug; understand trade-offs
In-Office Requirement: 1-2 times/quarter, Situated anywhere in the country, US based applicants only
What They're Looking For.
Must Have
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience, 7+ years of experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems, background in building data pipelines, working with time-series databases, columnar storage, stream processing, data modeling at scale, Hands-on experience with modern observability tools and practices, metrics, logging, tracing, profiling, Expert-level coding skills in languages like Java, Python, Go, or Scala, ability to write production-quality code, 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, 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, communication skills with ability to influence stakeholders at all levels
Nice to Have
Familiarity with OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, or similar technologies, Familiarity with Kubernetes, service mesh, etc., Contributions to open-source observability projects
What You'll Do.
Define observability roadmap
Understand engineering team needs
Translate needs into technical solutions
Architect distributed observability infrastructure
Build distributed observability infrastructure
Scale distributed observability infrastructure
Build high-performance data pipelines
Build storage for telemetry analysis
Establish observability standards
Establish observability patterns
Lead architectural reviews
Influence technical decisions
Stay current with observability trends
Evaluate cutting-edge tools
Adopt cutting-edge techniques
How You'll Work.
Team & Collaboration
Collaborate with AI; Explain your approach; Partner with SRE, Infrastructure, Product Engineering; Work with product team
Communication Scope
communication skills with ability to influence stakeholders at all levels
Full 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
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