Sr. Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Monetization Engineering

Pinterest

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. Pinterest is looking for a Senior Staff Software Engineer to lead Performance Ads Formats, a team building ad products and experiences that help Pinners turn intent into action and help lower-funnel advertisers drive stronger outcomes. In this role, you’ll be a senior technical leader across a suite of products such as Deal Ads, dynamic ad experiences, post ad click journeys, and more. You’ll partner closely with Product, Design, Data Science, PMM, TPM, and Engineering leaders to turn ambiguous opportunities into scalable, reliable ad products with measurable business impact. What you’ll do:  * Lead technical strategy and architecture across Performance Ads Formats, with a focus on growing good clicks, improving click quality, increasing conversions, and enhancing the Pinner experience. * Drive cross-functional product initiatives from discovery through launch and readout, including workstreams such as post-click ad journeys, dynamic ad formats, deal ads, etc. * Design scalable, resilient, and maintainable systems across client, API, backend, and partner surfaces, biasing for impact and balancing speed, quality, privacy / compliance needs, and long-term ownership. * Partner with Product and Data Science to make data-driven prioritization and launch decisions, using experiment results, guardrails, and business impact to decide what to scale, iterate, or stop. * Raise the production quality bar through strong design reviews, code reviews, testing strategy, QA / bug bash processes, observability, incident readiness, and thoughtful tech debt reduction. * Mentor senior engineers and create technical strategy docs, design docs, code, and analysis artifacts that become examples of clarity, simplicity, and quality across multiple teams. * Use pragmatic tools, including AI where useful, to accelerate knowledge discovery, prototyping, documentation, and quality checks while applying strong judgment and verification. What we’re looking for: * Deep technical architecture expertise in high-scale product systems, with the ability to reason from first principles and dig deep into how complex technical systems work under the hood. * A track record of leading technically complex, ambiguous, multi-team initiatives that shipped measurable product or business impact. * Excellent cross-functional collaboration and communication skills, including the ability to align senior stakeholders, make tradeoffs explicit, and influence without authority. * Strong data-driven decision making and prioritization: you can explain why something is the right bet, what evidence supports it, and how you would know whether it worked. * A production-quality mindset for scalable, reliable, maintainable software, including testing, observability, incident response, operational cost, and long-term system health. * Experience mentoring Senior and Staff engineers and raising the technical bar through reviews, architecture guidance, knowledge sharing, and crisp technical writing. * Demonstrated ability to use AI to improve speed and quality in your day-to-day workflow for relevant outputs. * Strong track record of critical evaluation and verification of AI-assisted work (e.g., testing, source-checking, data validation, peer review).High integrity and ownership. * you protect sensitive data, avoid over-reliance on AI, and remain accountable for final decisions and deliverables. * Nice to have: experience in ads, e-commerce, recommendations, experimentation platforms, or practical AI-assisted engineering workflows. * Bachelor’s/Master’s degree in a relevant field such as Computer Science, or 8+ YOE as a Software Engineer.   Relocation Statement: * This position is not eligible for relocation assistance. Visit our PinFlex page to learn more about our working model.   In-Office Requirement Statement: * We let the type of work you do guide the collaboration style. That means we're 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 in-person collaboration once a week and therefore needs to be in a commutable distance from one of the following offices: San Francisco or Palo Alto offices. #LI-HYBRID #LI-KBF At Pinterest we believe the workplace should be equitable, inclusive, and inspiring for every employee. In an effort to provide greater transparency, we are sharing the base salary range for this position. The position is also eligible for equity. Final salary is based on a number of factors including location, travel, relevant prior experience, or particular skills and expertise. Information regarding the culture at Pinterest and benefits available for this position can be found here. US based applicants only $245,402—$429,454 USD 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.   By submitting this application, I certify that all information submitted in my application and throughout the hiring process is true, accurate, and complete to the best of my knowledge. I understand that any false statement, omission, or misrepresentation may disqualify me from employment consideration or result in termination if discovered after hire.

Pinterest

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. Our Merchants organization focuses on onboarding and activation, catalog quality and health, merchant presence (including creator/UGC and trust signals), and ads upsell—helping merchants build healthy catalogs, reach the right audiences, and unlock clear paths to growth. In this role, you’ll lead high-impact engineering at the intersection of commerce platforms, catalog systems, and AI-native experiences. This includes applying ML, AI-assisted workflows, and GenAI where appropriate to improve metadata quality, merchant tooling, and operational efficiency. You’ll partner closely with Engineering Managers, Product Managers, Data Scientists, and other senior engineers to deliver systems with measurable business and user impact. What you’ll do:  * Own end-to-end technical delivery for cross-team initiatives—from problem framing and technical strategy through architecture, implementation, rollout, and iteration. * Shape catalog and integration systems for scale, reliability, and quality, ensuring merchant data is deep, broad, fresh, and actionable across partners, formats, and key signals such as inventory and pricing where relevant. * Build and evolve ML-, GenAI-, and AI-assisted merchant experiences with strong validation and guardrails—for example, metadata enrichment, gap-filling, and internal tools that improve catalog health without compromising trust. * Contribute to merchant onboarding and activation systems that span teams, creating streamlined flows, signals, and decisioning pathways that improve approval rates, merchant quality, and time to value. * Partner where appropriate on organic attribution, merchant insights, and data-driven pathways from organic success to paid products, ensuring strategy is measurable rather than anecdotal. * Drive technical decisions using clear tradeoffs across revenue, conversion, catalog health, engagement, and Torso success. * Mentor senior engineers and raise the bar for technical design, engineering quality, and production readiness across the organization. * Use AI to accelerate your own work—across exploration, drafting, analysis, and synthesis—while maintaining strong judgment, rigorous validation, and accountability for outcomes. What we’re looking for: * 10+ years of software engineering experience, including meaningful time as a Staff, Senior Staff, or equivalent-level IC building and operating complex production systems. * Strong track record in commerce, marketplaces, ads, or other adjacent large-scale domains, including leadership on cross-team technical initiatives. * Deep experience in systems design, API design, and data-intensive systems, with the ability to navigate tradeoffs in performance, reliability, and scalability. * Experience building or partnering on ML-, AI-, or GenAI-adjacent systems, with a pragmatic understanding of where these technologies add value and how to deploy them responsibly. * Catalog, integrations, or merchant platform experience is a strong plus. * Experience with growth, measurement, funnel optimization, or organic-to-paid ecosystems is a plus. * Strong communication skills and the ability to influence technical direction without directly owning every implementation detail. * Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field—or equivalent practical experience.   Relocation Statement: * This position is not eligible 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 1-2 times/month, and therefore needs to be in a commutable distance from one of the following offices: San Francisco or Palo Alto. #LI-HYBRID #LI-CL5 At Pinterest we believe the workplace should be equitable, inclusive, and inspiring for every employee. In an effort to provide greater transparency, we are sharing the base salary range for this position. The position is also eligible for equity. Final salary is based on a number of factors including location, travel, relevant prior experience, or particular skills and expertise. Information regarding the culture at Pinterest and benefits available for this position can be found here. US based applicants only $245,402—$429,454 USD 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.   By submitting this application, I certify that all information submitted in my application and throughout the hiring process is true, accurate, and complete to the best of my knowledge. I understand that any false statement, omission, or misrepresentation may disqualify me from employment consideration or result in termination if discovered after hire.

Pinterest

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. With more than 500 million users around the world and 300 billion ideas saved, Pinterest Machine Learning engineers build personalized experiences to help Pinners create a life they love. With just over 4,000 global employees, our teams are small, mighty, and still growing. At Pinterest, you’ll experience hands-on access to an incredible vault of data and contribute large-scale recommendation systems in ways you won’t find anywhere else. Within the Monetization ML Engineering team, we try to connect the dots between the aspirations of Pinners and the products offered by our partners. In this role, you will be responsible for developing and executing a vision for the evolution of the machine learning technology stack within Ads.   What you’ll do: * Build cutting edge technology using the latest advances in deep learning and machine learning to personalize Pinterest * Partner closely with teams across Pinterest to experiment and improve ML models for various product surfaces (Homefeed, Ads, Growth, Shopping, and Search), while gaining knowledge of how ML works in different areas * Use data driven methods and leverage the unique properties of our data to improve candidates retrieval * Work in a high-impact environment with quick experimentation and product launches * Keep up with industry trends in recommendation systems  * Leverage LLMs to enhance content understanding   What we’re looking for: * 2+ years of industry experience applying machine learning methods (e.g., user modeling, personalization, recommender systems, search, ranking, natural language processing, reinforcement learning, and graph representation learning) * Degree in computer science, statistics, or related field; or equivalent experience * End-to-end hands-on experience with building data processing pipelines, large scale machine learning systems, and big data technologies (e.g., Hadoop/Spark) * Practical knowledge of large scale recommender systems, or modern ads ranking, retrieval, targeting, marketplace systems * Nice to have: * M.S. or PhD in Machine Learning or related areas * Publications at top ML conferences * Experience using Cursor, Copilot, Codex, or similar AI coding assistants for development, debugging, testing, and refactoring * Familiarity with LLM-powered productivity tools for documentation search, experiment analysis, SQL/data exploration, and engineering workflow acceleration * Expertise in scalable realtime systems that process stream data * Passion for applied ML and the Pinterest product * Background in computational advertising   Relocation Statement:  *  This position is not eligible for relocation assistance. Visit our PinFlex page to learn more about our working model.   #LI-HYBRID   At Pinterest we believe the workplace should be equitable, inclusive, and inspiring for every employee. In an effort to provide greater transparency, we are sharing the base salary range for this position. The position is also eligible for equity. Final salary is based on a number of factors including location, travel, relevant prior experience, or particular skills and expertise. Information regarding the culture at Pinterest and benefits available for this position can be found here. US based applicants only $189,721—$332,012 USD 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.   By submitting this application, I certify that all information submitted in my application and throughout the hiring process is true, accurate, and complete to the best of my knowledge. I understand that any false statement, omission, or misrepresentation may disqualify me from employment consideration or result in termination if discovered after hire.