We are seeking a highly skilled Staff Machine Learning Engineer to lead our Content Mining team. The successful candidate will define and execute the technical vision and roadmap for source discovery, content acquisition optimization, and content understanding. This role offers an exciting opportunity to lead innovative projects that power engaging and accurate Pins.
Key Highlights
Technical Skills Required
Benefits & Perks
Job Description
About The Company
Millions of people around the world come to Pinterest to find creative ideas, dream about new possibilities, and plan for memories that will last a lifetime. At Pinterest, our mission is to bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love, and this begins with the talented individuals behind our innovative products. We foster a dynamic environment that encourages innovation, celebrates diversity, and promotes personal and professional growth. Our platform serves as a hub for discovery, creativity, and connection, empowering users to explore and realize their passions. We are committed to building a workplace that values inclusion, collaboration, and continuous learning, ensuring our team members thrive both personally and professionally.
About The Role
We are seeking a highly skilled Staff Machine Learning Engineer to join our Content Mining team. In this role, you will serve as the technical lead for a team of five engineers, including four Machine Learning Engineers (MLEs). Your primary responsibility will be to define and execute the multi-quarter technical vision and roadmap for source discovery, content acquisition optimization, and content understanding. You will be instrumental in designing, training, and deploying large-scale ML systems, with a focus on large language models (LLMs) and natural language processing (NLP) techniques for content extraction and classification. This position offers an exciting opportunity to lead innovative projects that power engaging and accurate Pins, directly impacting the user experience and platform growth. As a leader, you will mentor team members, set engineering standards, and collaborate closely with Product, Data, and Infrastructure teams to ensure seamless execution and operational excellence.
Qualifications
- 5+ years of experience building end-to-end ML products, including at least 2 years in a technical leadership role.
- Deep hands-on experience with NLP/LLM training and inference using frameworks such as PyTorch and Python.
- Proven track record of deploying scalable models, including feature and data pipelines, online serving, and performance monitoring.
- Strong software engineering skills in Python, with a focus on best practices and maintainability.
- Experience mentoring senior engineers and influencing cross-functional teams.
- Masters or PhD degree in Machine Learning, Computer Science, or related fields.
- Expertise in LLM efficiency techniques such as LoRA/adapters, distillation, quantization, and prompt caching.
- Knowledge of MLOps tools and platforms like Airflow, Spark/Presto, Triton, and vLLM.
- Strong evaluation, prompt/data design, and fine-tuning skills for NLP models.
- Ability to define and meet operational SLOs for data quality, model performance, and system reliability.
Responsibilities
- Own the architecture, roadmap, and execution strategy for content source discovery, acquisition, and understanding systems.
- Lead design reviews, establish engineering standards, and ensure alignment across Product, Data, and Infrastructure teams.
- Mentor and develop team members through technical guidance, code reviews, and pairing sessions.
- Train and fine-tune large language models and NLP models for classification, extraction, and instruction-following tasks.
- Design reusable features and frameworks to facilitate model sharing and efficiency.
- Productionize models for large-scale inference, optimizing for latency, reliability, and cost efficiency through techniques like quantization and distillation.
- Establish evaluation protocols, automate regressions, and run A/B tests to measure model impact and accuracy.
- Collaborate with labeling teams and define data standards to improve data quality and coverage.
- Define and monitor SLOs for data quality, model performance, and system uptime, leading incident response and postmortem analyses.
- Drive initiatives that measure and improve downstream revenue and engagement metrics.
Benefits
- Competitive salary and comprehensive health benefits.
- Flexible work arrangements to support work-life balance.
- Opportunities for professional development and continuous learning.
- Inclusive and collaborative work environment.
- Access to cutting-edge tools and technologies in machine learning and AI.
- Support for relocation and in-office collaboration as needed.
Equal Opportunity
Pinterest is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to fostering an inclusive environment for all employees. We make employment decisions based on merit, qualifications, and business needs. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, veteran status, disability, or any other protected characteristic under applicable laws. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal history, in accordance with legal requirements.