PinterestStaff Machine Learning Engineer, Ads Bidding & Pacing
AI in this role
Design and optimize machine learning algorithms for ads bidding, pacing, and targeting at scale.
About Pinterest:
Millions 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.
Discover 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.
At 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.
Through 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.
Pinterest is one of the fastest growing online ad platforms, and our success depends on building a suite of bid strategies that help advertisers achieve their goals within the Pinterest marketplace.
We support both automatic bidding (maximizes the number of clicks, conversions and GMV) as well as target average bidding (CPA or ROAS targets) for Pinterest ads. We’re looking for an ML engineer with experience in ads delivery, machine learning, bid landscapes, and automatic bidding / ads pacing to develop new data-driven techniques to drive ads delivery performance and maximum ROI for advertisers, growing Pinterest’s revenue stream.
What you’ll do:
- Design target ROAS and automatic bidding & pacing algorithms for ads.
- Explore bid landscapes to maximize revenue and advertiser value.
- Work with product and sales teams to design and implement bidding strategies for new ad products.
- A/B Experiment with bidding algorithm improvement ideas.
- Collaborate with other teams to identify bidding and budgeting opportunities and capitalize on them.
What we’re looking for:
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Statistics, a related field, or equivalent experience.
- 6+ years of industry experience in ads delivery, automatic bidding / pacing, target ROAS bidding, ads marketplace / utility, or machine learning.
- Proven Staff-level technical leadership as an IC: driving technical direction and cross-team alignment without formal people management.
- Demonstrated ability to use AI to improve speed and quality of your workflow, with a strong track record of validating and stress-testing AI-assisted outputs.
- Degree in Computer Science, Statistics, or a related field.
- Direct experience specifically with bidding or pacing is a big plus.
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, statistics, engineering, or
- Experience with Cursor, Copilot, Codex, or similar AI coding assistants for development, debugging, testing, and refactoring.
- Familiarity with LLM-powered productivity tools for documentation search, experiment analysis, SQL/data exploration, and engineering workflow acceleration.
Relocation Statement:
- This position is not eligible for relocation assistance. Visit our PinFlex page to learn more about our working model.
In-Office Requirement Statement:.
- We recognize that the ideal environment for work is situational and may differ across departments. What this looks like day-to-day can vary based on the needs of each organization or role.
- This role will need to be in the office for in-person collaboration 3 times per quarter and therefore needs to be in a commutable distance from one of the following offices: San Francisco, Palo Alto, Seattle.
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At 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.
Information regarding the culture at Pinterest and benefits available for this position can be found here.
US based applicants only$222,716—$389,753 USDOur Commitment to Inclusion:
Pinterest 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. By 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.How we rate this
Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Ads Bidding & Pacing at Pinterest rates 90 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Open the description and count.
Prepare for this job
A free preview built only from this posting: what it asks for, what you could be asked in an interview, and how to adjust your resume.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Questions you could be asked
- Tell me about a project where machine learning was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where algorithms was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where a b testing was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where ads bidding was part of your work. What did you do?
- Walk me through how you've used Copilot in your day-to-day work.
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: Machine Learning, Algorithms, A B Testing, Ads Bidding, and Copilot. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them — a tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
- Lead with what you built, trained or shipped — this role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.
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