# Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Programmatic Ads

**Company:** [Pinterest](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/pinterest)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA, Palo Alto, CA, Seattle, WA
**Role:** ML Engineering
**Salary:** $223k – $390k/yr
**Experience:** 5+ years
**Skills:** Machine Learning, Real-Time Bidding, Ad Ranking, Optimization Algorithms, Probabilistic Modeling, Deep Learning, Large-Scale Ml Systems, Online Experimentation, Feature Engineering, Control Algorithms
**Posted:** 2026-05-19

> Staff ML Engineer leading development of core bidding, ranking, and yield optimization systems for programmatic ads across exchanges. Owns end-to-end ML pipelines and drives technical direction for marketplace algorithms.

## Job Description

## What you’ll do

- Design and implement algorithms for real-time bidding, ad scoring/ranking, inventory selection, and yield optimization across multiple exchanges.
- Own end-to-end ML systems: problem framing, metrics, data/feature design, model training, evaluation, and online experimentation.
- Introduce and productionize new exchange and supply signals (e.g., quality, conversions, identity, fraud, content understanding) to unlock incremental advertiser value.
- Partner closely with Ads Ranking & Bidding, Measurement, and Programmatic Engineering to integrate new models and objectives into the ads stack.
- Use AI to accelerate analysis, experimentation, and iteration (e.g., exploring model variants, automating path from learnings to launch) while applying strong judgment and vision.

## What we’re looking for

- Industry experience building and shipping large-scale production ML systems in ads, search, recommendations, or related domains.
- Deep experience with control/optimization algorithms for bidding, pacing, allocation, or similar marketplace problems.
- Strength in probabilistic modeling and measurement (e.g., quality/fraud signals, deep-learning engagement prediction) and making principled trade-offs between coverage, accuracy, and impact.
- 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.
- 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.

## Similar roles

- [Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Ads Conversion Core Modeling](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/f644645e-5449-4c8f-b14b-1603c1d9f370) - Pinterest - San Francisco, CA - $223k – $390k/yr
- [Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Ads Conversion](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/ff73b85a-4d2f-4719-a627-f2bdec52a278) - Pinterest - San Francisco, CA - $223k – $390k/yr
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