Director, Machine Learning Engineering – Content & User Understanding

We're seeking a Director of Machine Learning to lead the Content and User Understanding team at Pinterest. This leader will define the long-term ML/AI vision, technical strategy, and drive execution for building company-wide content and user understanding ML models and systems. The successful candidate will oversee multiple teams of machine learning and backend engineers and managers, combining deep technical expertise with strong people leadership and product instincts to deliver industry-leading ML solutions.

Key responsibilities include:

• Leading ML strategy and innovation for foundational content and user understanding
• Setting the multi-year vision, technical strategy, and investment roadmap for content and user understanding ML models and systems
• Driving innovation of cutting-edge AI approaches, including large-scale sequence modeling, VLM, and LLM
• Ensuring the foundational content and user understanding models and systems are effective and scalable to power downstream applications across Pinterest surfaces
• Collaborating with product, engineering, and data science leaders in partner teams to translate foundational ML techniques into significant business impact
• Building and scaling a world-class ML organization
• Managing, hiring, and developing a team of high-performing managers and ML/backend engineers, fostering a culture of innovation, technical excellence, rigor, and impact
• Acting as the primary technical spokesperson for Content and User Understanding to executive leadership and external partners
• Representing the team's needs and priorities in company-wide planning and resource allocation to ensure long-term, strategic ML investment

Requirements:

• 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
• In-office requirement statement: 1-2 times every 6 months
• Relocation statement: not eligible for relocation assistance
• Salary: $267,393-$550,515 USD
• Benefits: equity, flexible working model, and commitment to inclusion