Staff Data Scientist, Engagement Ecosystem at Pinterest

**Who this is for** This role is for a rigorous, senior-level data scientist who wants to solve complex ecosystem-level problems, such as the trade-offs between

Work type: remote

Location: San Francisco, CA, US; Remote, US

Salary: $164,695 – $339,078/yr

Type: Full-time

Summary

**Who this is for** This role is for a rigorous, senior-level data scientist who wants to solve complex ecosystem-level problems, such as the trade-offs between organic engagement and monetization. **Key highlights** You will drive scientific excellence across the engagement ecosystem, developing robust ML and causal inference models that directly inform product strategy for Pinterest’s global user base. **You might be a good fit if you...** - Have significant experience applying advanced ML and causal inference techniques to product-level challenges. - Are adept at designing and evaluating complex experimentation frameworks in a large-scale environment. - Can bridge the gap between technical data insights and business strategy for senior leadership. - Are eager to mentor junior and senior data scientists in a collaborative, cross-functional setting.

Job Description

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](https://www.pinterestcareers.com/our-life/pinflex/) 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](https://www.pinterestcareers.com/our-philosophy-on-ai-in-hiring/).

We are looking for a Staff Data Scientist for our Engagement Ecosystem. You will shape the future of people-facing and business-facing products we build at Pinterest. Your expertise in quantitative modeling, experimentation and algorithms will be utilized to solve some of the most complex engineering challenges at the company. You will collaborate on a wide array of product and business problems with a diverse set of cross-functional partners across Product, Engineering, Design, Research, Product Analytics, Data Engineering and others. The results of your work will influence and uplevel our product development teams while introducing greater scientific rigor into the real world products serving hundreds of millions of pinners, creators, advertisers and merchants around the world.

What you’ll do

• Develop a deep, nuanced understanding of the Pinterest engagement ecosystem and key product surfaces, quantifying ecosystem-level opportunities and risks.

• Lead projects on:

• Tradeoffs between organic engagement and advertising.

• Deep dives on how engagement metrics impact monetization and retention.

• Understanding and predicting the value of core behaviors (e.g., saving, repinning, board creation) as they relate to downstream business outcomes.

• Designing and evaluating interventions that sustainably boost enterprise metrics across product boundaries.

• Design and productionize robust, scalable ML and evaluation frameworks—spanning forecasting, recommendation, and causal inference.

• Advocate for best-in-class experimentation, instrumentation, and metric design; bridge the gap between short-term proxy metrics and long-term business impact.

• Collaborate across disciplines—Product, Engineering, Research, Business, and Design—translating complex data questions into actionable business insights.

• Mentor and guide junior and senior scientists, fostering intellectual curiosity and driving technical excellence.

• Use advanced ML, causal inference, and generative AI techniques to model and explain complex interactions across the Pinterest ecosystem (e.g., organic engagement, ads, content quality, monetization), turning highly ambiguous business questions into clear, testable hypotheses and decision frameworks for Core and Monetization leadership.

• Apply AI-assisted analysis and developer tools (e.g., copilot, intelligent dashboards) to accelerate exploration, improve code quality, and scale insight generation, ensuring we can quickly evaluate tradeoffs like ad load vs. Pinner engagement.

• Champion responsible and scientifically rigorous use of AI across the ecosystem, setting best practices for instrumentation, experimentation, and metric design so that AI-driven changes balance engagement, revenue, and long-term user trust.

• 10+ years of hands-on experience in web-scale data environments, with a track record of solving hard, ambiguous problems in product, engagement, or ecosystem analytics.

• Deep expertise in: Machine Learning (recommendation, ranking, prediction, experimentation), Statistical Modeling & Causal Inference (observational and experimental data), Product analytics/strategy (beyond dashboards: root cause, goaling, design collaboration), Programming in Python/R and advanced SQL/Spark.

• Strong product intuition—ability to scope, question, and design the right solutions for ill-defined, high-impact business problems.

• Scientific rigor and healthy skepticism: You challenge assumptions, find flaws, and drive towards robust, reproducible outcomes.

• Exceptional communication: You make the complex simple, and can influence both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Track record mentoring and growing data talent at the staff/senior IC level.

• Cross-functional leadership and the ability to align competing interests towards shared goals.

• Proven track record applying machine learning and/or causal inference to complex, ambiguous product or marketplace problems at scale (e.g., ads, recommendations, multi-sided ecosystems), from problem framing and experimental design through to influencing senior stakeholders and driving product or policy decisions.

• Hands-on experience with modern AI/ML tools and workflows (such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn, or similar, plus LLM-based assistants or copilots) and comfort rapidly adopting new AI capabilities into day-to-day analysis, prototyping, and experimentation workflows.

• Masters degree in a technical field (e.g., Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering, Social Sciences).

• We 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.

• This 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.

• This position is not eligible for relocation assistance. Visit our[ PinFlex](https://www.pinterestcareers.com/pinflex/) page to learn more about our working model.

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
$164,695—$339,078 USD

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