Sr. Manager, Machine Learning Engineering-Applied Research

Pinterest • San Francisco, CA

6d • Remote

About The Position

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. 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.

Requirements

• 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.
• 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.
• Experience mentoring, coaching, and up-leveling software and machine learning engineers.
• A self-propelled learner who stays ahead of industry trends, new tools, and emerging methodologies, with an appetite for building proof-of-concept prototypes.
• The ability to transform vague, ambiguous questions into well-defined projects with clear success metrics that drive business decisions.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to distill complex technical findings for leadership and product teams, backed by a strong track record of publications in machine learning, AI, data science, or related technical fields.
• MS/PhD in Computer Science, ML, NLP, Statistics, Information Sciences or related field

Nice To Haves

• Track record of publishing at top-tier ML/RecSys conferences (KDD, RecSys, NeurIPS, CVPR).
• Experience leveraging modern LLM/Agentic workflows and generative AI capabilities to accelerate engineering productivity and context extraction.

Responsibilities

• 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.
• Successfully transition breakthrough ML research into production-ready systems that directly impact core company metrics.
• 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.
• Collaborate with Core Engineering, Ads Engineering, Infrastructure, Content, and Data Science teams to prototype, build, and scale solutions to complex engineering challenges.
• Partner with leadership to deepen user understanding and set the strategic direction for our recommendation system roadmap.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager