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About This Role
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.
Discover a career where you ignite innovation for millions, transform passion into growth opportunities, celebrate each other's unique experiences and embrace the flexibility to do your best work. Creating a career you love? It's Possible.
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.
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.
The Advertiser and Seller Experience team builds intelligent systems that help Pinterest advertisers and sellers move from insight to action. Our work spans advertiser\-facing products such as Ads Manager as well as internal seller productivity tools that help sales teams identify opportunities, prepare customer conversations, troubleshoot campaign performance, and drive advertiser growth. As a Staff Machine Learning Engineer focused on Agentic AI \& Recommendations, you will lead the ML strategy and execution for the intelligence layer behind these experiences. You will build recommendation systems, context foundations, and feedback loops that help AI agents understand advertiser and seller goals, surface the right next\-best action, and learn from user response over time. This is a high\-impact Staff IC role for someone who wants to combine deep recommendation systems expertise with modern agentic AI to shape how Pinterest advertisers and sellers work.
What you'll do:
- Lead the design and implementation of large\-scale recommendation and decisioning systems that power proactive advertiser and seller guidance across Ads Manager, Pinterest Business Assistant, Pinnacle, and sales productivity workflows.
- Build ML foundations for a unified context layer and context agent that transforms campaign, account, performance, market, workflow, and interaction data into reusable signals for agentic experiences.
- Own recommendation initiatives end\-to\-end, from problem framing, label and feedback design, feature pipelines, model development, and offline evaluation through production deployment, experimentation, and monitoring.
- Develop evaluation and feedback loops that measure recommendation quality, user trust, action rates, business impact, and failure modes, then use those learnings to continuously improve models and agent behavior.
- Apply modern ML techniques such as retrieval and ranking, embeddings, personalization, multi\-objective optimization, contextual decisioning, and response modeling to business\-critical advertiser and seller workflows.
- Use AI to accelerate analysis, prototyping, documentation, and experimentation while applying strong judgment, testing, data validation, and review to ensure correctness, reliability, privacy, and customer trust.
- Mentor engineers and raise the technical bar for ML development, experimentation rigor, responsible AI usage, and production\-quality agentic systems across the organization.
What we're looking for:
- 7\+ years of experience building and deploying large\-scale ML systems in production (e.g., ads ranking, recommendation, Agentic AI, or search), with strong end\-to\-end ownership from problem scoping through evaluation and experimentation, and solid software engineering skills in at least one modern language (e.g., Python, Java) and large\-scale data systems.
- Degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, or a related technical field, or equivalent experience.
- Strong end\-to\-end ML ownership, including problem scoping, data and label design, feature engineering, model training, production deployment, offline/online evaluation, experimentation, and monitoring.
- Deep understanding of recommendation system architectures such as candidate generation, retrieval, ranking, re\-ranking, embeddings, vector search, multi\-task learning, calibration, contextual bandits, or reinforcement learning.
- Proven Staff\-level technical leadership as a hands\-on IC, setting technical direction and driving multi\-quarter ML and systems roadmaps, including aligning stakeholders on priorities, trade\-offs, and execution plans.
- Excellent cross\-functional communication and collaboration skills, building strong partnerships with product, data science, infra, and partner ML teams to clarify ambiguous problem spaces, co\-create solutions, and drive consensus with senior stakeholders.
- Experience using AI coding assistants (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code) and LLM\-powered productivity tools to accelerate development, experimentation, and data exploration, with a clear approach to validation, data protection, and critical review of AI\-assisted work.
Relocation Statement:
- This position is noteligible for relocation assistance. Visit our PinFlex page to learn more about our working model.
In\-Office Requirement Statement:
- We recognize that the ideal environment for work is situational and may differ across departments. What this looks like day\-to\-day can vary based on the needs of each organization or role.
- This role will need to be in the office for in\-person collaboration 1 day per week and therefore needs to be in a commutable distance from one of the following offices \[Seattle or Bay Area].
\#LI\-REMOTE
\#LI\-DM57
Our Commitment to Inclusion:
Pinterest is an equal opportunity employer and makes employment decisions on the basis of merit. We want to have the best qualified people in every job. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion or religious creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, status as a protected veteran, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information or characteristics (or those of a family member) or any other consideration made unlawful by applicable federal, state or local laws. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you require a medical or religious accommodation during the job application process, please complete this form for support.
Salary Context
This $189K-$389K range is above the 75th percentile for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $181K across 1996 roles with salary data).
View full AI/ML Engineer salary data →Role Details
About This Role
AI/ML Engineers build and deploy machine learning models in production. They work across the full ML lifecycle: data pipelines, model training, evaluation, and serving infrastructure. The role has evolved significantly over the past two years. Where ML Engineers once spent most of their time on model architecture, the job now tilts heavily toward inference optimization, cost management, and integrating LLM capabilities into existing systems. Companies want engineers who can ship production systems, and the experimenter-only role is fading fast.
Day-to-day, you're writing training pipelines, debugging data quality issues, setting up evaluation frameworks, and figuring out why your model performs differently in staging than it did on your dev set. The best ML engineers are obsessive about reproducibility and measurement. They instrument everything. They know that a model is only as good as the data feeding it and the infrastructure serving it.
Across the 3,824 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 71% of the market. At Pinterest, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week might include: debugging a data pipeline that's silently dropping 3% of training examples, running A/B tests on a new model version, writing documentation for a feature flag system that lets you roll back model deployments, and reviewing a junior engineer's PR for a new evaluation metric. Meetings tend to be cross-functional since ML touches product, engineering, and data teams.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
Skills Required
Python and PyTorch dominate the requirements. Most roles expect experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and familiarity with ML frameworks like TensorFlow or JAX. RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) has become a top-3 skill requirement as companies integrate LLMs into their products. Docker and Kubernetes show up in about a third of postings, reflecting the production focus of the role.
Beyond the core stack, employers increasingly want experience with experiment tracking tools (MLflow, Weights & Biases), feature stores, and vector databases. Fine-tuning experience is valuable but less common than you'd think from reading Twitter. Most production LLM work is RAG and prompt engineering, not fine-tuning. If you have both, you're in a strong position.
Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
Compensation Benchmarks
AI/ML Engineer roles pay a median of $178,940 based on 11,900 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $227,400. This role's midpoint ($289K) sits 62% above the category median. Disclosed range: $189K to $389K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $200,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $253,000. The 90th percentile reaches $307,500. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Engineering Manager ($293,500) and AI Safety ($274,200). By seniority level: Entry: $97,380; Mid: $160,000; Senior: $227,400; Director: $243,000; VP: $250,000.
Pinterest AI Hiring
Pinterest has 6 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across Data Scientist, AI/ML Engineer. Positions span San Francisco, CA, US, Remote, US. Compensation range: $209K - $550K.
Location Context
AI roles in San Francisco pay a median of $253,000 across 1,990 tracked positions. That's 26% above the national median.
Career Path
Common paths into AI/ML Engineer roles include Data Scientist, Software Engineer, Research Engineer.
From here, career progression typically leads toward ML Architect, AI Engineering Manager, Principal ML Engineer.
The fastest path into ML engineering is through software engineering with a self-directed ML education. A CS degree helps, but production engineering skills matter more than academic credentials. Build something that works, deploy it, and measure it. That portfolio project is worth more than a Coursera certificate. For career growth, the fork comes around the senior level: go deep on technical complexity (staff/principal track) or move into managing ML teams.
What to Expect in Interviews
Expect system design questions around ML pipelines: how you'd build a training pipeline for a specific use case, handle data drift, or design A/B testing infrastructure for model deployments. Coding rounds typically involve Python, with emphasis on data manipulation (pandas, numpy) and algorithm implementation. Take-home assignments often ask you to build an end-to-end ML pipeline from raw data to deployed model.
When evaluating opportunities: Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
AI Hiring Overview
The AI job market has 3,824 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 119 entry-level, 1,813 mid-level, 1,472 senior, and 420 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 16% of the market (613 positions). The remaining 3,187 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $200,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $253,000. The 90th percentile reaches $307,500. Highest-paying categories: AI Engineering Manager ($293,500 median, 31 roles); AI Safety ($274,200 median, 51 roles); Research Engineer ($260,000 median, 401 roles).
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
The AI Job Market Today
The AI job market spans 3,824 open positions across 15 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (2,702), Data Scientist (281), AI Software Engineer (258). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.
The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (119) are outnumbered by mid-level (1,813) and senior (1,472) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 420 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 16% of all AI roles (613 positions), with 3,187 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.
AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $200,000. Top-quartile roles start at $253,000, and the 90th percentile reaches $307,500. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.
Category matters for compensation. AI Engineering Manager roles lead at $293,500 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $142,800. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.
The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (1,968 postings), Aws (1,203 postings), Azure (882 postings), Rag (877 postings), Gcp (735 postings), Prompt Engineering (587 postings), Pytorch (586 postings), Claude (554 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
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