Pinterest Multi-Region Strategy
Impact Summary
Led Pinterest’s transition from region-bound infrastructure to a spec-driven multi-region architecture, enabling predictable region expansion, higher resiliency, and future-ready global scaling.
Role
Senior Staff Cloud Systems Engineer – Technical Lead
Timeline
2021–Present
Scale
- Multi-region
- Global reliability posture
- Multi-account
- 2026+ region roadmap
Links
Problem
Pinterest approached the limits of a single-region model. As global traffic increased and reliability expectations tightened, the existing infrastructure lacked a coherent way to define, build, and operate regions. “Multi-region” existed in discussion but not as a programmable, repeatable system. Service teams, security, and platform engineering all carried different assumptions about what a new region required, creating ambiguity in planning and risk in execution.
Approach
I redefined multi-region expansion as an orchestration challenge rather than a collection of one-off infrastructure tasks. A key innovation was introducing region types—Lightweight, Full, and Read-Only—giving the organization a taxonomy to anchor decisions. This definition allowed us to reason clearly about control-plane replication, data locality, and failure boundaries.
From there, I proposed a spec-driven Region Artifact: a single, declarative document expressing all requirements—network boundaries, account layout, IAM rules, sidecar dependencies, service discovery configuration, and workload readiness steps. The Region Artifact became the blueprint for automation and cross-team alignment.
I then developed a four-phase orchestration model:
- Landing Zone – accounts, org units, baselines, and guardrails
- Network – VPC layout, IPAM, routing, peering, centralized egress
- Infrastructure Services Substrate – service discovery, security sidecars, observability, shared clusters
- Workloads & Routing – Envoy routing, onboarding flows, traffic readiness
This phased model allowed product teams, SRE, and security to understand exactly where their systems fit.
Outcomes
- A unified organizational understanding of multi-region and multi-account strategy
- Executable roadmap for Pinterest’s 2026+ regional expansion
- Reduced engineering ambiguity by providing a contract between infra and product teams
- Stronger reliability posture by reducing control-plane single points of failure
- More predictable region build timelines and cost modeling
Key Contributions
- DRI for multi-region and multi-account strategy
- Defined region types (Lightweight, Full, Read-Only)
- Authored Region Spec artifact concept
- Created four-phase region orchestration model
- Drove alignment across SRE, Security, Data Engineering, and Leadership
- Enabled Spark on EKS multi-account evolution