Pinterest is hiring a remote Sr. Manager Applied Research!
Pinterest is hiring a Senior Manager for Applied Research to lead its Recommendation System innovation team, guiding a group of machine learning researchers and engineers who shape how content is surfaced across the platform. The role blends deep technical direction-setting with hands-on people leadership: you own the roadmap for next-generation recommender work while balancing near-term metric wins against multi-quarter, higher-risk research bets in areas such as generative recommendation systems, large sequential models, and reinforcement learning. You partner with executive, product, and engineering stakeholders to turn ambiguous questions into measurable programs, and you are accountable for moving research breakthroughs into production systems that affect core company metrics. Pinterest describes the position as remote-friendly anywhere in the country, with in-person collaboration expected roughly one to two times per quarter; relocation support is not offered.
Key responsibilities
- Set the technical vision and roadmap for next-generation recommendation systems, championing modern ML methods.
- Recruit, mentor, and grow a team of applied scientists, ML engineers, and technical leads, supporting career development and an inclusive research-to-production culture.
- Manage a portfolio that spans short-term, measurable product impact and longer-horizon, high-risk research initiatives.
- Translate research advances into production systems that move core business metrics.
- Collaborate with consumer engineering, ads, platform, content, and data science teams to prototype and scale solutions.
- Communicate complex technical findings to leadership and product partners to influence strategy.
Key requirements
- 7+ years of combined post-graduate academic and industry experience applying ML to real-world, web-scale problems, plus 3+ years of direct people management.
- Demonstrated delivery of high-impact initiatives across multiple product areas, with data-driven influence over peers and leadership.
- Experience coaching and up-leveling software and machine learning engineers.
- Ability to convert vague, ambiguous problems into well-scoped projects with clear success metrics.
- Strong communication skills and a publication record in ML, AI, data science, or a related field.
- MS or PhD in Computer Science, ML, NLP, Statistics, Information Sciences, or a related discipline.
- Preferred: managing hybrid research and production teams, publishing at KDD/RecSys/NeurIPS/CVPR, and familiarity with generative AI for recommendations or deep RL.
- Seniority: Senior Manager
- Work mode: Remote (in-office collaboration 1-2 times per quarter; no relocation assistance)
- Salary: $227,871 – $469,147 USD (US-based applicants)
- Key skills: recommendation systems, machine learning, people management, generative recommendation systems, large sequential models, reinforcement learning, LLMs, research-to-production, cross-functional leadership, publication record
Want more jobs?
Join our mailing list to receive updates about new data science and Sr. Manager Applied Research jobs.
