Pinterest may be relatively under the radar compared to big tech platforms like Facebook and Google, but the photo sharing social-media company offers competitive pay for software engineers, data analysts and other technical roles.
The company has ambitious growth plans and was recently valued at $37 billion while reportedly in early stage talks for a takeover by PayPal. That deal fell through, but Pinterest is still paying sizable salaries to its non-executive workers.
When the company went public in early 2019, it was valued at $10 billion. That year was also a huge payout for Pinterest's co-founder and current CEO Ben Silbermann. For several years, he's received a relatively modest executive salary of $197,000 -- less than some of the company's engineers and managers. But when the company went public, Silbermann received $45.7 million in stock awards, as did co-founder and chief creative officer Evan Sharp, according to filings with the SEC. Sharp also receives $330,000 in base salary.
Non-executive staff get stock awards as well, in addition to base salaries, as is typical among tech companies. According to several posts on Blind, a social network accessible only by those with valid work email addresses, Pinterest has recently offered between $250,000 and $700,000 in equity grants as part of compensation packages. It also occasionally dangles signing bonuses as high as $50,000, Blind users said.
As for base salary at Pinterest, some of its highest paid workers are software engineers, engineering managers and product designers. An engineer can make $250,000 in base salary and a lead product designer can make $200,000. Most Pinterest jobs are still in the longstanding tech hubs of San Francisco and Seattle, with pay varying slightly between the two. The top of the pay scale for an engineer in California appears to be $250,000 and in Washington it's $197,600, according to the latest data.
Business Insider pulled the numbers from hundreds of work-visa applications Pinterest recently filed with the US government. Companies are required to disclose salary information and the pay must be the same level a US citizen would get paid for the same job.
The information has limitations. It covers only jobs for which Pinterest is hiring from other countries and the data excludes stock-based compensation, which can account for a considerable portion of Silicon Valley take-home pay. Still, it gives solid insight into the company's pay scale.
Keep reading for a breakdown of what the social-media company pays some of its key employees. Each listing is for one role, unless noted. Once you're done, take a look at Business Insider's Big Tech salary database to see how much Google, Facebook, Tesla, Amazon, and other companies pay their workers.
Software Engineering
- Software engineer: $250,000
- Software engineer: $206,300
- Software engineer (2 applicants): $197,600 to $296,400
- Software engineer, measurement privacy: $197,600
- Software engineer: $184,080
- Software engineer: $180,000
- Software engineer: $171,163
- Software engineer: $170,872
- Software engineer (2): $170,000
- Software engineer: $165,000
- Software engineer (6) $164,300 to $246,400
- Software engineer: $162,980
- Software engineer (4) $157,477
- Software engineer: $150,000
- Software engineer (3): $145,725
- Software engineer (4) $138,800
- Software engineer, research: $130,894
- Software engineer (2): $120,931
- Software engineer: $115,900
- Software engineer (2) $113,110
Other engineering-related roles
- Engineering manager: $240,500
- Engineering manager, experimentation services: $197,600
- Machine learning engineer: $138,800
- Business intelligence engineer: $138,600
- Salesforce engineer: $157,477
Data science and analysis
- Data scientist: $151,154
- Technical program manager: $146,872
Product and design
- Product analyst: $130,000
- Product manager: $116,917
- Lead product designer, measurement: $200,000
Other roles
Partner manager in advertising: $112,000
Recruiting analyst: $108,826
Intellectual Property Operations Specialist II: $100,450
