Staff Machine Learning Engineer - Responsible AI

Pinterest; California, San Francisco (MO, CA); Hybrid; USD 208,000 - 365,000; Full time

Job summary

An innovative company is seeking a Tech Lead Engineer to drive initiatives in Responsible AI. This role involves leading projects that focus on fairness and ethics in machine learning applications. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams to implement cutting-edge AI technologies, ensuring they align with the company's values. With a focus on mentorship and strategic direction, this position offers a unique opportunity to make a significant impact on user experience and ethical AI development. Join a team dedicated to inspiring creativity and innovation while shaping the future of technology.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in engineering roles building large-scale ML-driven user-facing products.
• Deep knowledge of cutting-edge ML architectures and their application.

Responsibilities

• Lead projects identifying and mitigating bias in ML applications.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to promote Responsible AI practices.

Skills

Machine Learning

Fairness and Ethics in AI

Generative AI

System Architecture

Cross-team Collaboration

Education

Masters in Computer Science

PhD in Computer Science

Tools

Transformers

2-tower models

Large-scale ML Systems

Job description

About Pinterest:

Millions of people worldwide visit our platform to find creative ideas, dream about new possibilities, and plan memories that last a lifetime. At Pinterest, our mission is to inspire everyone to create a life they love, starting with the people behind the product.

Discover a career where you ignite innovation for millions, turn passions into growth opportunities, celebrate diverse experiences, and enjoy the flexibility to do your best work. Creating a career you love? It's possible.

The Responsible AI team is part of the Advanced Technologies Group (ATG), Pinterest's advanced machine learning team. ATG aims to keep Pinterest at the forefront of AI and ML across various use cases such as recommendations, ranking, and content understanding. It is an applied team working horizontally across the company to bring cutting-edge AI/ML technology into products, collaborating with product engineering teams. The team also publishes research but primarily focuses on impacting business metrics directly.

At Pinterest, our goal is to inspire our users, Pinners, to live the lives they love. Our platform is powered by state-of-the-art ML algorithms that understand billions of visual items and the interests of over 500M monthly active users, providing personalized, inspiring content. ML at Pinterest is multi-modal, utilizing image, text, and graph signals, operating at large scale and often in real-time interactive experiences.

We prioritize positivity and inspiration, emphasizing representation and belonging. The Responsible AI team collaborates across initiatives, including Generative AI alignment, evaluation, and mitigation—ensuring models are safe, unbiased, and aligned with Pinterest's values. Recent features include user-controllable skin tone, hair pattern search refinements, and body type options.

We are seeking a Tech Lead Engineer to guide key initiatives in Responsible AI, working with senior leaders to shape our technical direction. You will lead innovative projects, develop advanced ML approaches focused on fairness, and pioneer responsible AI safeguards for emerging tech, making a lasting impact on users, business, and ethical AI development at Pinterest.

What you'll do:

• Lead projects at the responsible AI frontier, identifying, avoiding, and mitigating bias in ML applications, including generative AI.
• Collaborate with engineering teams (trust and safety, user modeling, content understanding) to leverage platforms and signals, promoting Responsible AI practices and fairness tooling across Pinterest.
• Mentor junior engineers within the Responsible AI team and across the company.
• Work with leadership to define and execute technical strategy in this domain.

What we're looking for:

• Extensive experience applying advanced ML methods in production, with a strong focus on responsible technology, fairness, ethics, and societal considerations.
• Deep knowledge of cutting-edge ML architectures (e.g., transformers, 2-tower models, LLMs) and their application in large-scale search and recommendation systems.
• Proven ability to measure, deploy, and refine fairness interventions and Responsible AI solutions at scale, translating research into impactful products.
• 5+ years in engineering roles building large-scale ML-driven user-facing products.
• 2+ years leading cross-team engineering efforts.
• Masters or PhD in Computer Science or related fields.

Desired skills:

• Experience in shaping and executing technical roadmaps, balancing immediate needs with long-term goals, defining OKRs, and orchestrating cross-functional efforts for production-quality solutions.
• Expertise in designing and scaling backend and ML systems for high-traffic, user-facing products, with a comprehensive understanding of system architecture, data pipelines, and deployment workflows.
• Success in deploying ML capabilities that enhance fairness and reduce bias in recommendation, content understanding, and ranking systems at scale.

Relocation Statement:

• This position is not eligible for relocation assistance. Visit our PinFlex page to learn more about our working model.

In-Office Requirement:

• Work style is flexible; we gather for key moments of collaboration and connection, but not always in the office.

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At Pinterest, we believe the workplace should be equitable, inclusive, and inspiring. We share salary ranges transparently: the base salary for this role ranges from $208,145 to $364,254 USD. The position may also include equity. Final salary depends on location, experience, skills, and other factors.

Learn more about our culture and benefits here.

US-based applicants only.

Our Commitment to Inclusion:

Pinterest is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, marital status, veteran status, disability, or other protected categories. For accommodations during the application process, please complete this form.