PhD University Grad Machine Learning Engineer (USA)

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 640 million users around the world and 300 billion ideas saved, Pinterest Machine Learning engineers help build personalized experiences to help Pinners create a life they love. 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.

By applying to this role, you will be considered for multiple roles open across our various ML teams. Please only apply once within the USA or Canada as multiple applications may delay our recruitment process.

This is a general posting for multiple roles open across our various ML teams. You will have the opportunity to work on a very large scope of problems in recommender systems, search, ads, ranking, natural language processing, graph representation learning, personalization, etc.

As a Machine Learning Engineer at Pinterest, you’ll work on tackling new challenges in machine learning and artificial intelligence. As you kickstart your career at Pinterest, you’ll join our engineering teams as we maneuver through exponential growth and massive scale while building awesome products and features, creating visually rich experiences, spearheading the discovery problem, and pinpointing tomorrow’s engineering challenges.

What you’ll do:

Contribute to cutting-edge research in machine learning and artificial intelligence that can be applied to Pinterest problems

Collect, analyze, and synthesize findings from data and build intelligent data-driven model

Write clean, efficient, and sustainable code

Use machine learning, natural language processing, and graph analysis to solve modeling and ranking problems across discovery, ads and search

Design, build, and test models to predict engagement for notifications (push, emails, in-app notifications)

Build content recommendation systems to power our push, email, and in-app notifications

Work on state-of-the-art large-scale applied machine learning projects

Scope and independently solve moderately complex problems

What we’re looking for:

PhD in Computer Science, ML, NLP, Statistics, Information Sciences or related field required

Machine Learning experience (ranking, computer vision, NLP, content recommendations, embedding, information retrieval etc)

Experience with big data technologies (e.g., Hadoop/Spark) and scalable realtime systems that process stream data

Mastery of at least one systems languages (Java, C++, Python) or one ML framework (Tensorflow, Pytorch, MLFlow)

Proficiency with AI-native engineering, including the design of agent-friendly codebases.

High degree of autonomy in learning new agent-first development tools.

Strong critical thinking when working with AI-generated suggestions, with a clear approach to validating correctness, performance, security, and maintainability.

Comfort iterating on prompts, refining workflows, and adapting AI-assisted approaches based on the problem, context, and constraints.

Experience in research and in solving analytical problems

Strong communicator and team player. Being able to find solutions for open-ended problems.

Preferred Qualifications:

Publications in machine learning, AI, data science, data analytics, statistics, or related technical fields

Interest in research and in applying ML to impactful real-world problems on the Pinterest product

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 may require you to be located near an office for in-person collaboration, and therefore may need to be located a commutable distance from one of our Pinterest offices.

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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

$174,078 — $229,044 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.