Get a Job at Pinterest: Interview Process and Top Questions

Learn how to prepare for Pinterest interviews with this in-depth guide.

Pinterest is one of the world’s most popular social media platforms. The company values inspiration and is on a mission to build a more positive internet. Pinterest uses “pin” in a lot of its company lingo to demonstrate its positive, light-hearted work environment, so expect to hear terms like, “pinners” (users), “pinployees,” “pinterview” process, and “pinclusion.”

Below, we break down the pinterview process and top questions you should expect to answer.

Pinterest Interview Process

Pinterest is a fairly small company compared to the popularity and size of the platform’s user base, so it uses a rigorous hiring process to ensure potential new employees are truly a great fit. But Pinterest strives to demonstrate its values of positivity and inspiration in its interview process, promising a positive candidate experience. 

The Pinterest interview process typically takes about 3–4 weeks and involves:

• Recruiter phone screen,
• Technical screen,
• Final round.

Recruiter phone screen

The first step of the interview process at Pinterest is a 30-minute call with a Pinterest recruiter. Expect to discuss the role requirements, your previous work history, career goals, and scheduling the remaining steps of your interview.

You may also get asked one technical question, or asked to describe one impactful project you worked on, from which your recruiter will get an idea of your tech stack. 

During this round, expect questions like:

• Tell me about your previous work experience.
• Why do you want to work at Pinterest?

Technical screen

The technical screen at Pinterest for engineers is a 45–70-minute coding challenge on CodeSignal, usually with medium-difficulty data structure and algorithm questions. For DS roles, the tech screen is split into two parts: first, 2–3 standard SQL coding questions, followed by a high-level case study about a practical business problem.  

Non-technical roles get an initial video call conversation with the hiring manager in lieu of a coding challenge, which assesses your qualifications for the role. Ask any questions you have about the role, team, and company at this time, too. 

Final round

The final interview loop at Pinterest consists of five rounds. These rounds vary depending on the role you interview for, and are conducted by various team members and stakeholders associated with the role. All roles, though, can depend on a hiring manager round focused on behavioral questions. Because of Pinterest’s emphasis on collaboration, in all of your rounds, demonstrate how you can quickly and easily establish collaborative relationships with teammates and cross-functional partners. 

Top Pinterest Interview Questions

These are examples of real interview questions asked at Pinterest as reported by candidates.

Behavioral

• Why do you want to work at Pinterest?
• Tell me about yourself.
• Tell me about your previous work experience.
• Tell me about a meaningful project you worked on.

Coding

• Implement a k-nearest neighbors algorithm.
• Define PUT and POST.
• Build a to-do list in React.
• Justify a string of text given character length.

System design

• Design a product recommendation system.
• Design spam detection on Pinterest.
• Design a rate limiter.
• Design a feature to locate items.
• Design a shopping experience for Netflix.
• Build a social media app.

Machine learning

• Explain overfitting.
• Explain data drifting.
• Where do vanishing gradients occur in a neural network?
• Explain the differences between ReLU and Sigmoid.
• Explain the differences between nonconvex and convex functions.

Data science

• For a dataset with a million data points, would you use a DNN or KNN? Why?
• Describe an A/B test.
• Retention is going down by 10% on a week-by-week basis. As a data scientist, how would you analyze this scenario?
• Calculate the statistical significance of a difference between two groups in an A/B test.

Product management 

• Given Google Search is just a simple text input and hasn't innovated further, how would you improve the user journey from the landing page?
• How could e-commerce platforms enhance the shopping experience to be more inspirational?
• Should Slack enter the education market by launching Slack for education?
• Why did Google acquire YouTube?
• Improve Pinterest.

Pinterest Interview Loops

Behavioral

Your hiring manager conducts your behavioral round at Pinterest. While other companies put a greater focus on culture fit, Pinterest typically keeps behavioral questions and culture fit to this one round, aside from a few questions in the recruiter call. Expect a conversational interview, where you answer behavioral questions with brief examples from your past experiences on how you share core values with Pinterest. 

Study up on Pinterest’s core values and prepare anecdotes according to the STAR framework about past projects that show off your collaboration skills and openness to constructive feedback. In this round, you'll also learn about the team structure and work you’ll do daily in the role, so come prepared for questions about this, too.

Coding

Pinterest’s coding round is usually standard data structures problems, but contextualized to Pinterest product engineering. For example, your interviewer might present a graph full of Pinterest image data and ask you to write a program that identifies similar images. While the tech screen is usually easy-to-medium difficulty, the final coding round gets into the hard level.

In the coding round, communicate your thought process to the interviewer, ask clarifying questions, and think through the problem. Check out Pinterest’s engineering blog to learn more about the team before you interview.

Common coding topics at Pinterest: 

• Window functions
• DFS/BFS
• Dynamic programming
• Binary Tree
• Hashmap
• Arrays
• Web fundamentals (React/JS)
• Graphs
• Sliding Window
• Backtracking
• Matrix operations

System design

Pinterest’s system design round consists of getting an open-ended problem with about 30 minutes to describe how you’d build a technical solution for it. The system design questions at Pinterest are usually related to a specific Pinterest product or business issue, so get to know Pinterest’s platform extensively ahead of this round and read through Pinterest’s engineering blog to understand current ventures Pinterest is working on, which may relate to your question.

Explain your design, briefly address trade-offs you’re making as you go, and stay focused on the overall picture. Leave time for the interviewer to ask follow-up questions, where you can go into more details, as you’re asked.

Machine learning

Pinterest ML engineers build the systems that power Pinterest’s search algorithm, recommendation engine, personalized user feeds, ad delivery, user acquisition, and more. Most Pinterest MLEs use Python, PyTorch, SQL, Spark, and Hadoop. Much of Pinterest’s infrastructure is distributed and based on containerization tools like Docker and Kubernetes.

Pinterest’s machine learning round is a conversational interview, where the interviewer asks about your ML experience and past projects, while sprinkling in technical questions to assess your knowledge of specialized ML topics. Check out Pinterest’s engineering blog to learn more about Pinterest’s current ML ventures before you interview.

Data science

For the data science round at Pinterest, get ready to show off your deep understanding of data science fundamentals, like forming hypotheses and experiments, and your strong communication skills. The DS coding portion assesses your Python, SQL, and algorithm skills. You'll have to use either Python or R. 

The DS final round also includes a 60-minute analytical problem-solving loop, focused on a high-level practical business case. In this loop, you must demonstrate your product intuition and how you approach problem-solving using metrics. Expect to frame a hypothesis or design an experiment. Communication is key, so talk through your thought process.

During the DS interview process, you get to choose a specialty you’re interested in: statistics, machine learning, or forecasting, which then becomes one of your final round interviews. The 45-minute specialty round obviously varies, but regardless of specialty, expect three questions on CoderPad, starting with a high-level case study assessing your specialty knowledge.

Product management 

The product management final rounds at Pinterest typically include a case study, where you might get asked to design a new feature for Pinterest or analyze a product's performance metrics. To prepare, familiarize yourself with Pinterest's products, mission, and recent developments. Reflect on your past experiences, thinking of instances that demonstrate your leadership, innovation, and problem-solving skills.

Pinterest Interview Tips

Pinterest holds inspiration above all else. 

Pinterest’s social media platform is all about inspiration. The company prioritizes inspiration internally, too. It promises an inspiring interview process, inspiring work environment, and offers benefits meant to keep employees inspired, like flexible work (referred to as PinFlex), and Work-From-Anywhere—allowing employees to travel outside their country for up to 90 days per year.

Pinterest values collaboration and belonging. 

Demonstrate that you care about collaboration and belonging, too, by referencing past experiences that highlight these values in your behavioral interview. To stand out, create a story bank and reference Pinterest’s core values ahead of your recruiter call and hiring manager final round interview, which both assess culture fit.  

Know Pinterest inside and out.

Pinterest’s first core value is “put pinners first.” Before your interviews at Pinterest, download the Pinterest app, make an account, and use the platform extensively. Make sure you understand how the product works, that you can relate to pinners (users), and can answer practical questions.  

FAQs

How competitive are Pinterest interviews?

Pinterest interviews are fairly competitive, especially for technical roles. Study and prepare ahead of time for your interview at Pinterest, particularly for the technical coding and system design rounds, as well as for the behavioral round.

Know that you can apply to more than one role at a time, too, to increase your chances. Pinterest encourages interested candidates to apply to any and all roles they feel inspired by and meet the qualifications for. 

How should I prepare for my interview at Pinterest? 

• Practice some coding questions, focusing on SQL and Python.
• Look over Pinterest’s engineering blog, open-source projects, published research, and mission and values.
• Take an Exponent interview course in your domain: ML engineering, data science, SWE, system design, or PM. 
• Book a mock interview with a Pinterest employee so you know what to expect.

Does Pinterest hire students or new grads? 

Yes! Pinterest hosts new grad and intern roles. These applications open in August and September and are currently offered in the domains of engineering, MLE, and DS.

Pinterest also runs an apprenticeship program for the fields of engineering, product management, design and research, for people from non-traditional career backgrounds or who face barriers of entry into the tech industry. Check out Pinterest’s Early Careers page to learn more. 

More Pinterest Interview Prep Resources

Exponent has extensive resources to prepare you to feel your best when it comes time for your interview at Pinterest:

💬 Brush up on interview questions asked at Pinterest

📖 Read through these role-specific Pinterest interview guides