Director, Machine Learning Engineering – Content & User Understanding

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 were on a mission to bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love and that starts with the people behind the product.

Discover a career where you ignite innovation for millions transform passion into growth opportunities celebrate each others unique experiences and embrace theflexibility to do your best work. Creating a career you love Its Possible.

At Pinterest AI isnt just a feature its a powerful partner that augments our creativity and amplifies our impact and were looking for candidates who are excited to be a part of that. To get a complete picture of your experience and abilities well explore your foundational skills and how you collaborate with AI.

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 here.

We are looking for a Director of Machine Learning to lead the Content and User Understanding team at Pinterest. This leader will define the longterm ML / AI vision technical strategy and drive execution for building the company-wide content and user understanding ML models and systems that power Pinterests critical product surfaces across homefeed related search shopping growth and ads.

You will oversee multiple teams of machine learning and backend engineers and managers. Youll combine deep technical expertise with strong people leadership and product instincts to deliver industryleading ML solutions including driving state of art innovation in VLM (VisionLanguage Models) and LLM (Large Language Models)-based approaches.

What youll do:

• Lead ML Strategy and Innovation for Foundational Content and User Understanding
  • Set the multi-year vision technical strategy and investment roadmap for content and user understanding ML models and systems.
  • Drive innovation of cutting-edge AI approaches including large scale sequence modeling VLM and LLM.
• Lead Execution and Deployment Across Pinterest to Deliver Topline Impact
  • Ensure the foundational content and user understanding models and systems are effective and scalable to power downstream applications across Pinterest surfaces: homefeed related search shopping growth and ads.
  • Collaborate with Product Engineering and Data Science leaders in partner teams to translate foundational ML techniques into significant business impact. Form strong collaboration across teams and build trust.
• Build and Scale a World-Class ML Organization
  • Manage hire and develop a team of high-performing managers and ML / Backend engineers fostering a culture of innovation technical excellence rigor and impact.
• Drive ML Influence Across Pinterest
  • Act as the primary technical spokesperson for Content and User Understanding to executive leadership and external partners.
  • Represent the teams needs and priorities in company-wide planning and resource allocation to ensure long-term strategic ML investment.

What were looking for:

• 12 years of professional experience as a technical leader including 5 years in people leadership roles (managing managers and senior ICs).
• Technical degree in a related field or equivalent practical experience.
• Deep ML expertise: building and operating large-scale ML systems in recommendation ads or search.
• Expertise in large scale deep learning VLM and LLM approaches.
• Track record to set long term technical vision and lead teams to deliver top line business impacts.
• Seasoned People Leader: Proven success leading complex ML organizations managing managers and exceptional communication and influence skills to drive close collaboration with multiple partner teams.
  
  

InOffice Requirement Statement:

• We let the type of work you do guide the collaboration style. That means were not always working in an office but we continue to gather for key moments of collaboration and connection.
• This role will need to be in the office for inperson collaboration 12 times every 6 months and therefore can be situated anywhere in the country.
  
  

Relocation Statement:

• This position is not eligible for relocation assistance. Visit our PinFlex page to learn more about our working model.

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