Jobs / United States / Pinterest INC
Sr. Staff Software Engineer, Merchants
Pinterest INC · 🇺🇸 San Francisco, CA, US; Palo Alto, CA, US
Sponsorship verdict
Sponsorship possible
One solid signal, not two — worth applying, and worth asking about sponsorship early.
- Employer is on a government sponsor recordThe US Department of Labor certified 218 H-1B/E-3 labor condition applications for this employer between Oct 2025 and Jun 2026 (latest Jun 2026) — the step every H-1B hire needs first. USCIS also records 53 H-1B approvals in FY2023. Source: LCA disclosure data (US Department of Labor (OFLC)).
- The posting doesn’t mention sponsorshipSilence isn’t a refusal — ask the recruiter before investing much time.
- No salary bar for this routeH-1B has no fixed salary bar: the employer must pay at least the prevailing wage for the role and area. Cap-subject employers enter a lottery weighted by wage level. Source: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/12/29/2025-23853/weighted-selection-process-for-registrants-and-petitioners-seeking-to-file-cap-subject-h-1b, rules effective 2026-02-27.
- What Pinterest INC paid sponsored hires in similar roles58 certified filings for “Sr. Software Engineer” (Software Developers) in CA: $188k–$226k, median $188k. Most were filed at wage level II (48%) — 2 lottery entries, ≈31% projected selection odds for cap-subject employers. Source: US Department of Labor LCA disclosure data (Oct 2025 – Jun 2026).
- Confirmed live todayWhen a source last listed this job as open.
US H-1B: cap-subject employers enter a lottery weighted by wage level — Level I gets 1 entry, Level IV gets 4 (DHS projected selection odds ≈15% at Level I to ≈61% at Level IV). Universities and non-profit research employers are cap-exempt. The $100,000 fee for new petitions from abroad is currently blocked by a court order (appeal pending).
A verdict summarises public evidence; it is not legal advice and never a guarantee — the employer and the immigration authority decide. Sign in to factor in where you can already work.
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Sponsor Radar — Pinterest INC
The US Department of Labor certified 218 H-1B/E-3 labor condition applications for this employer between Oct 2025 and Jun 2026 (latest Jun 2026) — the step every H-1B hire needs first. USCIS also records 53 H-1B approvals in FY2023. Source: LCA disclosure data (US Department of Labor (OFLC)).
Past sponsorship or register membership never guarantees sponsorship for this vacancy or for you. Full Sponsor Radar for Pinterest INC →
About the role
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 . Our Merchants organization focuses on onboarding and activation, catalog quality and health, merchant presence (including creator/UGC and trust signals), and ads upsell—helping merchants build healthy catalogs, reach the right audiences, and unlock clear paths to growth. In this role, you’ll lead high-impact engineering at the intersection of commerce platforms, catalog systems, and AI-native experiences. This includes applying ML, AI-assisted workflows, and GenAI where appropriate to improve metadata quality, merchant tooling, and operational efficiency. You’ll partner closely with Engineering Managers, Product Managers, Data Scientists, and other senior engineers to deliver systems with measurable business and user impact. What you’ll do: • Own end-to-end technical delivery for cross-team initiatives—from problem framing and technical strategy through architecture, implementation, rollout, and iteration. • 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. • 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. • 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. • 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. • Drive technical decisions using clear tradeoffs across revenue, conversion, catalog health, engagement, and Torso success. • Mentor senior engineers and raise the bar for technical design, engineering quality, and production readiness across the organization. • Use AI to accelerate your own work —across exploration, drafting, analysis, and synthesis—while maintaining strong judgment, rigorous validation, and accountability for outcomes. What we’re looking for: • 10+ years of software engineering experience, including meaningful time as a Staff, Senior Staff, or equivalent-level IC building and operating complex production systems. • Strong track record in commerce, marketplaces, ads, or other adjacent large-scale domains, including leadership on cross-team technical initiatives. • Deep experience in systems design, API design, and data-intensive systems, with t