{"id":129450,"url":"https://alion.io/job/pinterest-sr-manager-machine-learning-engineering-applied-research","title":"Sr. Manager, Machine Learning Engineering-Applied Research","company":{"id":75,"name":"Pinterest","domain":"pinterest.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/pinterest","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":80,"open_postings":26,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.808,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":49,"computed_at":"2026-10-28T05:59:10Z"}},"role":"Management","role_family":"Management","seniority":"senior","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":227871,"max":469147,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":469147},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":3,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"NLP","optional":false},{"name":"Recommender Systems","optional":false},{"name":"Reinforcement Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Agentic Workflows","optional":true},{"name":"LLM","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-04T20:37:06Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-09","last_verified_at":"2026-10-28T07:21:09Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":84,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":84},"description":"About Pinterest:\nMillions 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.\nDiscover 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.\nAt 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.\nThrough 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.\nWe're looking for a highly technical Senior Engineering Manager with a deep understanding of modern recommendation systems to manage, lead and develop a team of ML researchers and engineers within the Applied Science team. In this role, you will lead the strategy of the Recommendation System innovation team. You will help the team build a balanced portfolio of work that addresses both immediate short-term business impact and long-term strategic breakthroughs in areas like Generative Recommendation System (GenRecSys), Large Sequential Models, and Reinforcement Learning (RL). Partnering closely with executive leadership, product management, and engineering partners, you will evolve our technical roadmap and directly drive Pinterest’s core mission forward. \nWhat you will do:\nTechnical Vision and Execution: Own the technical roadmap and strategic vision for Pinterest’s next-generation recommendation systems. Champion the use of state-of-the-art ML techniques to deliver revolutionary innovations in recommendation technology.\nTeam Leadership & People Management: Support, mentor, and grow a world-class team of Applied Scientists, Machine Learning Engineers, and technical leads. Recruit top talent, foster an inclusive research-to-production culture, and guide career progression.\nPortfolio & Strategy Management: Balance execution across two parallel horizons-delivering near-term measurable metric improvements while sponsoring multi-quarter, high-risk/high-reward AI/ML research initiatives.\nResearch to Production: Successfully transition breakthrough ML research into production-ready systems that directly impact core company metrics.\nCross-functional Partnership: Collaborate seamlessly with Consumer Engineering, Ads Engineering, Platform, Content, and Data Science teams to prototype, build, and scale solutions to complex engineering challenges. Partner with leadership to deepen user understanding and set the strategic direction for our recommendation system roadmap.\nWhat we are looking for:\nTechnical Depth: 7+ years of combined post-graduate academic and industry experience applying state-of-the-art ML technologies to real-world problems on web-scale data, alongside 3+ years of direct people management experience.\nProven Execution: A track record of delivering high-impact initiatives across multiple product areas, with a demonstrated ability to influence peers and leadership using data-driven insights.\nTalent Development: Experience mentoring, coaching, and up-leveling software and machine learning engineers.\nContinuous Learner: A self-propelled learner who stays ahead of industry trends, new tools, and emerging methodologies, with an appetite for building proof-of-concept prototypes.\nBusiness & Product Acumen: The ability to transform vague, ambiguous questions into well-defined projects with clear success metrics that drive business decisions.\nCommunication & Credibility: Excellent communication skills with the ability to distill complex technical findings for leadership and product teams, backed by a strong track record of publications in machine learning, AI, data science, or related technical fields.\nAcademic Credentials: MS/PhD in Computer Science, ML, NLP, Statistics, Information Sciences or related field\nPreferred Qualifications\nExperience managing hybrid teams of research-oriented scientists and production-focused machine learning engineers.\nTrack record of publishing at top-tier ML/RecSys conferences (KDD, RecSys, NeurIPS, CVPR).\nFamiliarity with generative AI for recommendations (e.g., semantic indexing, LLMs/GenRec architectures) or deep RL for long-term user value optimization.\nExperience leveraging modern LLM/Agentic workflows and generative A\nIn-Office Requirement Statement:\nWe 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.\nThis role will need to be in the office for in-person collaboration 1-2 times/quarter and therefore can be situated anywhere in the country.\nRelocation Statement:\nThis position is not eligible for relocation assistance. Visit ourPinFlex page to learn more about our working model.\nAt 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.\nInformation regarding the culture at Pinterest and benefits available for this position can be found here.\nUS based applicants only\n$227,871—$469,147 USD\nOur Commitment to Inclusion:\nPinterest 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.\nBy 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.","description_format":"text","description_chars":7206,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":3,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"master","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Growth opportunities","Relocation assistance"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":true,"industries":["Social Networks","Video & Photo Sharing"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-08-04T20:37:06Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 287 · green card filings: 115","filings_12m":287,"filings_prev_12m":362,"green_card_filings_12m":115,"median_offered_wage_usd":191791,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-15T11:24:14+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":0}],"liveness":{"score":19,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.527,"p_room":0.36,"age_days":84,"expected_fill_days":49,"reasons":["conf:3","stale_co","velocity","win:tail","crowd:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-28T05:59:10Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":469147,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/pinterest-sr-manager-machine-learning-engineering-applied-research","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/pinterest-sr-manager-machine-learning-engineering-applied-research.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-28T10:50:12Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":14129,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-29T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":75},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=75"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fpinterest-sr-manager-machine-learning-engineering-applied-research"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fpinterest-sr-manager-machine-learning-engineering-applied-research"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fpinterest-sr-manager-machine-learning-engineering-applied-research"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/pinterest-sr-manager-machine-learning-engineering-applied-research\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fpinterest-sr-manager-machine-learning-engineering-applied-research"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":129450}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"pinterest.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":129450},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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