Staff Product Designer, Patterns & Design Innovation

Pinterest•San Francisco, CA

5h•Remote

About The Position

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. Millions of people around the globe look to Pinterest to find new ideas, get inspired, and create a life they love. Our mission is to help them on that journey by delivering delightful and intuitive experiences—which starts with the quality and consistency of our design foundation. We’re seeking a Staff Product Designer to join our Personalisation Patterns team: a hands-on, horizontal leader focused on systematizing quality and advocating for world-class experiences across Pinterest’s core surfaces. You'll shape the next generation of Pinterest’s design systems and component libraries, partner with cross-functional teams, and help us deliver on our ambitious mission in an effective, scalable, and human-centered way. This is a role for a rare blend: a designer who’s part methodological systems thinker, part craft champion, and part design technologist. The impact you’ll have will stretch across teams, product lines, and the very building blocks of Pinterest.

Requirements

8+ years of experience in product design, with significant time spent driving or evolving design systems or pattern libraries.
Portfolio demonstrating polished interface design, systemic thinking, component-based UIs, and tangible influence across large organizations.
Track record in staff/principal-level roles, influencing horizontally, upholding design craft quality, and partnering cross-functionally—ideally in large-scale consumer or platform environments.
Design technologist mindset: Comfortable experimenting with Figma prototypes, AI, and (optionally) front-end code; curious and opinionated about technical feasibility, accessibility, and how we can streamline design workflows and processes through systems and tools.
Expert-level motion and visual design skills, with a deep understanding of principles and their impact on usability, comprehension, and overall experience quality — using animation and transitions to enhance clarity, convey emotion, and drive user engagement.
Excellent communicator who can synthesize ambiguity into actionable design problems and unite teams through clarity, documentation, and collaboration.
Growth mindset with a passion for ongoing learning, experimentation, and mentoring others.
Demonstrated commitment to inclusion, accessibility, and crafting systems that serve diverse audiences.
Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field such as design, or equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

Experience leading platform-wide or multi-product design system initiatives.
Familiarity with personalization, large consumer apps, or rapid scale environments.
Contributions to public design systems, open-source libraries, or industry talks/writing.

Responsibilities

Drive System Quality: Lead the stewardship, evolution, and adoption of our core design patterns, component libraries, and gestalt subsystems—ensuring cohesive, delightful, and accessible user experiences at scale.
Partner Horizontally: Act as a strategic advisor and a hands-on partner to product, engineering, and design teams across Personalisation and core surfaces, empowering them to leverage best-in-class patterns and ship with confidence.
Advance Systemic Thinking: Apply methodical, systematic approaches to pattern creation: balancing product usability, craft, accessibility, and business needs—with input from a wide range of stakeholders.
Prototype & Technologize: Rapidly visualize, prototype, and validate new ideas; translate abstract solutions into practical, scalable patterns using Figma, code, AI, or whatever is needed to inspire clarity and adoption.
Uphold and Elevate Craft: Conduct quality audits, review flows and handoffs, and directly contribute hands-on design when needed—always advocating for the highest standards.
Mentor & Scale Impact: Inspire and guide other designers in craft, systemic thinking, and best practices through critique, guidance, and sharing your expertise across teams.
Champion Accessibility & Inclusion: Ensure our design systems support diverse user needs and raise the bar on inclusion and accessibility from the ground up.
Communicate & Influence: Clearly articulate your design thinking, rationale, and vision—presenting work to teams, leaders, and executives, and rallying consensus.