PhD Fall Machine Learning Intern (ATG — Visual, Multimodal, and Recommender Systems)

<strong>About Pinterest<br><br></strong>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>As a machine learning intern in our Advance Technology Group at Pinterest, you will be exposed to a full spectrum of ML product development. The team focuses on developing cutting-edge technologies for Pinterest’s visual understanding modules and recommender systems. You'll conduct research that can be applied across Pinterest engineering teams and engage in external collaborations and mentoring, while also having opportunities to deploy features to hundreds of millions of users or conduct research applicable for paper submissions. We offer a 12-week fall internship program remotely or in our San Francisco, Palo Alto, Seattle, or New York offices.<br><br><strong>Note To Applicants<br><br></strong><strong>By applying to this role, you will be considered for multiple intern roles open across our various ML teams. Please only apply once within the USA or Canada as multiple applications may delay our recruitment process.<br><br></strong><strong>Internships are 12 weeks paid from September 21 - December 11, 2026. Depending on the team, our fall internships will be located either remote or hybrid in San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York or Seattle offices.<br><br></strong><strong>What You’ll Do<br><br></strong><ul><li>Develop and launch new user features using unique internal datasets and ML techniques, especially in recommendation systems, computer vision, representation learning, generative AI, and responsible AI.</li><li>Gain hands-on experience with production ML systems, including algorithmic research, infrastructure, data engineering, training, inference, and product, to deliver innovative solutions. You will be exposed to full-stack production ML systems.</li><li>Leverage frontier AI tools and agents to accelerate engineering implementation, including prototyping and experimentation work.</li><li>Validate AI-generated outputs through testing, code review, and critical thinking, ensuring solutions are accurate, maintainable, secure, and aligned with team standards.</li><li>Use AI to better understand unfamiliar code, investigate bugs, and summarize technical context or documentation.</li><li>Contribute in cutting-edge research in machine learning and artificial intelligence that can be applied to Pinterest problems</li><li>Write clean, efficient, and sustainable code</li><li>Take proactive ownership over the completion and quality of your tasks and project with minimal guidance from your mentor, manager, and peers<br><br><br></li></ul><strong>What We’re Looking For<br><br></strong><ul><li>This role will be on our Visual Search or Applied Science teams. We are looking for candidates with experience in Computer Vision, Visual Search, User Understanding, Recommendation Systems, Reinforcement Learning, ML efficiency optimization, Generative AI, and LLMs. </li><li>Ability to legally work full time (40 hours/week) from September-December 2026</li><li>Working towards a PhD degree in Computer Science, ML, NLP, Statistics, Information Sciences or related field</li><li>Mastery of at least one systems language (Java, C++, Python) and one ML framework (Tensorflow, Pytorch, MLFlow)</li><li>Proficiency with AI-native engineering, including the design of agent-friendly codebases.</li><li>High degree of autonomy in learning new agent-first development tools.</li><li>Strong critical thinking when working with AI-generated suggestions, with a clear approach to validating correctness, performance, security, and maintainability.</li><li>Comfort iterating on prompts, refining workflows, and adapting AI-assisted approaches based on the problem, context, and constraints.</li><li>Experience in research and in solving analytical problems</li><li>Strong communicator and team player. Being able to find solutions for open-ended problems.<br><br><br></li></ul><strong>Preferred Qualifications</strong> <br><br><ul><li></li><ul><li>Publications in machine learning, AI, data science, data analytics, statistics, or related technical fields</li><li>Strong passion for research and for answering hard questions with research</li><li>Passion for applied ML and the Pinterest product<br></li></ul></ul><strong>Why Intern at Pinterest?<br><br></strong><ul><li>Meaningful Work: Contribute to projects that impact millions of users worldwide.</li><li>Mentorship: Learn from and be guided by experienced engineers and researchers in the field.</li><li>Growth and Development: Participate in professional development workshops and networking events to build your skills and connections.<br><br><br></li></ul><strong>In-Office Requirement Statement<br><br></strong><ul><li>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</li><li>This role may require you to be located near an office for in-person collaboration, and therefore may need to be located a commutable distance from one of our Pinterest offices.<br><br><br></li></ul>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. Final salary is based on a number of factors including location, travel, relevant prior experience, or particular skills and expertise.<br><br>Information regarding the culture at Pinterest and benefits available for this position can be found here.<br><br><strong>US based applicants only<br><br></strong>The salary for this position is $12,100 monthly.<br><br><strong>Our Commitment To Inclusion<br><br></strong>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.<br><br>

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Common Interview Questions And Answers

1. HOW DO YOU PLAN YOUR DAY?

This is what this question poses: When do you focus and start working seriously? What are the hours you work optimally? Are you a night owl? A morning bird? Remote teams can be made up of people working on different shifts and around the world, so you won't necessarily be stuck in the 9-5 schedule if it's not for you...

2. HOW DO YOU USE THE DIFFERENT COMMUNICATION TOOLS IN DIFFERENT SITUATIONS?

When you're working on a remote team, there's no way to chat in the hallway between meetings or catch up on the latest project during an office carpool. Therefore, virtual communication will be absolutely essential to get your work done...

3. WHAT IS "WORKING REMOTE" REALLY FOR YOU?

Many people want to work remotely because of the flexibility it allows. You can work anywhere and at any time of the day...

4. WHAT DO YOU NEED IN YOUR PHYSICAL WORKSPACE TO SUCCEED IN YOUR WORK?

With this question, companies are looking to see what equipment they may need to provide you with and to verify how aware you are of what remote working could mean for you physically and logistically...

5. HOW DO YOU PROCESS INFORMATION?

Several years ago, I was working in a team to plan a big event. My supervisor made us all work as a team before the big day. One of our activities has been to find out how each of us processes information...

6. HOW DO YOU MANAGE THE CALENDAR AND THE PROGRAM? WHICH APPLICATIONS / SYSTEM DO YOU USE?

Or you may receive even more specific questions, such as: What's on your calendar? Do you plan blocks of time to do certain types of work? Do you have an open calendar that everyone can see?...

7. HOW DO YOU ORGANIZE FILES, LINKS, AND TABS ON YOUR COMPUTER?

Just like your schedule, how you track files and other information is very important. After all, everything is digital!...

8. HOW TO PRIORITIZE WORK?

The day I watched Marie Forleo's film separating the important from the urgent, my life changed. Not all remote jobs start fast, but most of them are...

9. HOW DO YOU PREPARE FOR A MEETING AND PREPARE A MEETING? WHAT DO YOU SEE HAPPENING DURING THE MEETING?

Just as communication is essential when working remotely, so is organization. Because you won't have those opportunities in the elevator or a casual conversation in the lunchroom, you should take advantage of the little time you have in a video or phone conference...

10. HOW DO YOU USE TECHNOLOGY ON A DAILY BASIS, IN YOUR WORK AND FOR YOUR PLEASURE?

This is a great question because it shows your comfort level with technology, which is very important for a remote worker because you will be working with technology over time...