[1] Pineda's first acting role was in a 2010 episode of Men of a Certain Age, although she created a larger image online; she appeared in several CollegeHumor comedy sketch videos between 2010 and 2011, as well as fashion tutorials on YouTube.

[5][6] Pineda later appeared in an episode of The CW's The Vampire Diaries, which functioned as a backdoor pilot for the spin-off series The Originals, which began airing in 2013.

[10] In July 2018,[11] Pineda played Zia Rodriguez in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, her first film role for a major studio.

[14] In another interview, she explained how her character was originally going to have a conversation with Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) in which she revealed she was a lesbian; the dialogue was cut for time reasons.

[13] In 2019, Pineda starred in the horror film Mercy Black as Marina Hess, a woman who has spent 15 years institutionalized after partaking in a ritual to appease the entity Mercy Black, finally becoming convinced that the creature is not real, allowing her to go live with her family.

[19] In 2022, she reprised her role as Zia Rodriguez in Jurassic World Dominion,[20] appearing in the opening sequence; however, travel restrictions and quarantine requirements due to the COVID-19 pandemic prevented Pineda, who was in New Zealand, from showing up in another planned scene.

[1] She has pushed for greater recognition of Mexican actors, saying that they are "often relegated to obscurity" in scripts and casting, and that Latin America is underrepresented in general.

[2] In January 2025, Pineda's home in Los Angeles was destroyed by a wildfire; the only things she was able to save were her dog and a laptop computer.