Spotlight on Zurich: Meet Mirjam Wattenhofer, Distinguished Engineer

Hi Mirjam! Thanks for joining Life at Pinterest. We’d love to start by getting to know you! 

Before joining Pinterest about a month ago as a Distinguished Engineer, I worked at another tech company in Zurich, Kirkland and Mountain View for 18 years. I transitioned to Ads and then the last ~10 years I worked on different areas in e-commerce, e.g. ranking, infrastructure, compliance. Before that, I earned a master's and PhD at ETH Zurich.    

Why Pinterest?

I was very excited about joining a company where a lot of innovation happens fast, and I like the inspiration Pinterest brings for people of all ages, all around the world. 

I admired the leadership of Bill Ready, Matt Madrigal and Matthias Zenger and think that they have clear vision, business understanding, technical depth and at the same time care about user needs.  

Pinterest recently announced that we’ll be building an engineering hub in Zurich; what are you most excited about? 

There’s a lot of talent in the Zurich area, so I’m looking forward to working with great people who are excited about technology and Pinterest’s mission. We’ll work on e-commerce and AI innovation, as well as improving our global user experience, which are all topics I find exciting and impactful. 

What would you say to someone interested in joining the team? 

I would say that Pinterest has many exciting problems we can solve and there is lots of room for innovation. People are very collaborative and friendly and I found that you can create impact quickly. One can very easily work across teams and orgs, so there are many opportunities to learn things also outside one’s core area.  

How is our product currently bringing you inspiration? 

I got a bit into running and I like the mix of getting sports-related motivational Pins and also product Pins, e.g. trail running shoes, that I find super useful.

The other thing I like doing is thrift shopping (I have three Gen Z sons and thrifting is something we like doing together) and I like looking at thrift ideas on Pinterest, especially the Thrift Shop they recently set up - it was a nice way for me to browse around.

Ready to join our team in Zurich? Explore inspiring opportunities with Pinterest Engineering.