Sr. Manager, Machine Learning Engineering-Applied Research

About the role

<div class="content-intro"><p><strong>About Pinterest:</strong></p> <p>Millions of people around the world come to our platform to find creative ideas, dream about new possibilities and plan for memories that will last a lifetime. At Pinterest, we're on a mission to bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love, and that starts with the people behind the product.</p> <p>Discover a career where you ignite innovation for millions, transform passion into growth opportunities, celebrate each other's unique experiences and embrace the <a href="https://www.pinterestcareers.com/our-life/pinflex/">flexibility</a> to do your best work. It's Possible.</p> <p>At Pinterest, AI isn't just a feature, it's a powerful partner that augments our creativity and amplifies our impact, and we're looking for candidates who are excited to be a part of that. To get a complete picture of your experience and abilities, we'll explore your foundational skills and how you collaborate with AI.</p> <p>Through our interview process, what matters most is that you can always explain your approach, showing us not just what you know, but how you think. The listing location is San Francisco, CA, US; Remote, US.

Key facts

What you'll do

• <div class="content-intro"><p><strong>About Pinterest:</strong></p> <p>Millions of people around the world come to our platform to find creative ideas, dream about new possibilities and plan for memories that will last a lifetime.
• At Pinterest, we're on a mission to bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love, and that starts with the people behind the product.</p> <p>Discover a career where you ignite innovation for millions, transform passion into growth opportunities, celebrate each other's unique experiences and embrace the <a href="https://www.pinterestcareers.com/our-life/pinflex/">flexibility</a> to do your best work.
• It's Possible.</p> <p>At Pinterest, AI isn't just a feature, it's a powerful partner that augments our creativity and amplifies our impact, and we're looking for candidates who are excited to be a part of that.
• To get a complete picture of your experience and abilities, we'll explore your foundational skills and how you collaborate with AI.</p> <p>Through our interview process, what matters most is that you can always explain your approach, showing us not just what you know, but how you think.
• You can read more about our AI interview philosophy and how we use AI in our recruiting process <a href="https://www.pinterestcareers.com/our-philosophy-on-ai-in-hiring/">here</a>.</p></div><p>Pinterest is on a mission to bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love.
• The Applied Science team plays a critical role in this mission by developing cutting-edge machine learning solutions that scale across all of Pinterest engineering teams (see <a href="https://labs.pinterest.com/publications">our team's  publications</a>).</p> <p> </p> <p>We're looking for a highly technical Engineering Manager with a deep understanding of modern recommendation systems to manage, lead and develop a team of machine learning researchers and engineers within the Applied Science team.  In this role, you will help the team build a portfolio of work which can balance that addresses both immediate short-term business needs and long-term strategic breakthroughs.  You will partner with senior leaders to evolve our technical roadmap and directly drive Pinterest's core mission forward. </p> <p> </p> <p><strong>What you will do:</strong></p> <ul> <li><strong>Vision and Strategy:</strong> Own the technical roadmap and strategic vision for Pinterest's next-generation recommendation systems.
• Champion the use of state-of-the-art ML techniques to deliver revolutionary innovations in recommendation technology.</li> <li><strong>Research to Production:</strong> Successfully transition breakthrough ML research into production-ready systems that directly impact core company metrics.</li> <li><strong>Team Leadership and Culture:</strong> Manage, inspire, and develop a talented team of machine learning researchers and engineers specializing in recommendation systems.
• Partner with your team to define their charter, ensuring a strong balance between cutting-edge research and building foundational embeddings that benefit products across the entire company.</li> <li><strong>Cross-functional Collaboration:</strong> Collaborate with Core Engineering, Ads Engineering, Infrastructure, Content, and Data Science teams to prototype, build, and scale solutions to complex engineering challenges.

Requirements

• At Pinterest, we're on a mission to bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love, and that starts with the people behind the product.</p> <p>Discover a career where you ignite innovation for millions, transform passion into growth opportunities, celebrate each other's unique experiences and embrace the <a href="https://www.pinterestcareers.com/our-life/pinflex/">flexibility</a> to do your best work.
• To get a complete picture of your experience and abilities, we'll explore your foundational skills and how you collaborate with AI.</p> <p>Through our interview process, what matters most is that you can always explain your approach, showing us not just what you know, but how you think.
• The Applied Science team plays a critical role in this mission by developing cutting-edge machine learning solutions that scale across all of Pinterest engineering teams (see <a href="https://labs.pinterest.com/publications">our team's  publications</a>).</p> <p> </p> <p>We're looking for a highly technical Engineering Manager with a deep understanding of modern recommendation systems to manage, lead and develop a team of machine learning researchers and engineers within the Applied Science team.  In this role, you will help the team build a portfolio of work which can balance that addresses both immediate short-term business needs and long-term strategic breakthroughs.  You will partner with senior leaders to evolve our technical roadmap and directly drive Pinterest's core mission forward. </p> <p> </p> <p><strong>What you will do:</strong></p> <ul> <li><strong>Vision and Strategy:</strong> Own the technical roadmap and strategic vision for Pinterest's next-generation recommendation systems.
• Partner with leadership to deepen user understanding and set the strategic direction for our recommendation system roadmap.</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>What we are looking for:</strong></p> <ul> <li><strong>Technical Depth:</strong> 7+ years of combined post-graduate academic and industry experience applying state-of-the-art ML technologies to real-world problems on web-scale data, alongside 3+ years of direct people management experience.</li> <li><strong>Proven Execution:</strong> A track record of delivering high-impact initiatives across multiple product areas, with a demonstrated ability to influence peers and leadership using data-driven insights.</li> <li><strong>Talent Development:</strong> Experience mentoring, coaching, and up-leveling software and machine learning engineers.</li> <li><strong>Continuous Learner:</strong> A self-propelled learner who stays ahead of industry trends, new tools, and emerging methodologies, with an appetite for building proof-of-concept prototypes.</li> <li><strong>Business & Product Acumen:</st

About Pinterest

Millions of people around the world come to our platform to find creative ideas, dream about new possibilities and plan for memories that will last a lifetime. At Pinterest, we're on a mission to bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love, and that starts with the people behind the product.

Data and ML work turns messy inputs into measures a team can act on. Analysts and scientists clean datasets, choose metrics, and explain uncertainty. Engineers in this family also keep pipelines from breaking when schemas change. Nothing in this section adds model types or tools unless the listing named them. It only describes how data roles generally operate.