Sr. Technical Program Manager, Personalization

Pinterest Pinterest · Consumer · San Francisco, CA · Oversight Engineering

This role is for a Senior Technical Program Manager focused on personalization systems at Pinterest. The TPM will own a portfolio of personalization programs, drive cross-surface execution, partner with ML/Data Science on ranking and modeling, design operating models, align stakeholders, and communicate complex work. A key aspect is using GenAI as a default PgM tool and prototyping AI-assisted helpers, while adhering to AI governance and safety-by-design expectations. The role requires experience with personalization/recommendation systems and a data-driven approach.

What you'd actually do

  1. Own a portfolio of personalization programs that span recommendation platforms, ranking and optimization strategies, and new anticipatory experiences (e.g., unified landing pages, intelligent/AI-generated boards), with clear goals, milestones, and success metrics.
  2. Drive cross-surface execution so that personalization improvements can scale efficiently across multiple experiences (e.g., Homefeed, Explore, SEO landing pages, board and shopping surfaces), working closely with product and engineering owners in each area.
  3. Partner with Relevance and Data Science to ensure our ranking and modeling work prioritizes long-term value and revisitation (not just short-term clicks), and that experiment learnings systematically inform future roadmap and investment decisions.
  4. Design and run the operating model for personalization—creating cadences, dashboards, and decision forums that give leaders and teams a clear view of program health, risks, dependencies, and tradeoffs across the personalization portfolio.
  5. Align stakeholders across organizations (Relevance/ML, product surfaces, infra, curation, growth) when there are competing priorities or ambiguous ownership, and drive crisp, data-backed decisions that keep the personalization roadmap moving.

Skills

Required

  • 5+ years of experience as a Technical Program Manager (or similar role) driving complex, cross-functional technical programs.
  • Experience working with personalization, recommendations, relevance, or similar ML/AI-driven systems in consumer products (e.g., feeds, search, ranking, discovery).
  • Demonstrated ability to take ambiguous personalization problem spaces (e.g., “make the experience more anticipatory,” “optimize for long-term value”) and turn them into clear, actionable roadmaps and execution plans.
  • Strong program management fundamentals: you are highly organized, comfortable managing multiple complex workstreams, and skilled at building governance, planning, and communication structures that scale.
  • Data-driven decision-maker who is comfortable partnering with Data Science on experiment design, interpreting results, and using metrics (engagement, retention, revisitation, latency) to guide priorities and tradeoffs.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with a track record of explaining nuanced, technical topics to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, including senior leadership.
  • Proven ability to influence and align cross-functional partners in situations with competing priorities or unclear ownership, especially across product surfaces and platform/ML teams.
  • Experience creating or evolving processes and playbooks that improve how teams plan, execute, and review personalization work at scale.
  • AI-first execution mindset and workflow design fluency—comfortable using GenAI to accelerate TPM work, “vibe-coding” small helpers with AI coding assistants, and operating within AI governance and safety-by-design expectations.
  • Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field such as computer science, computer and information technology, or equivalent experience.

What the JD emphasized

  • personalization, recommendations, relevance, or similar ML/AI-driven systems
  • AI-first execution mindset
  • workflow design fluency

Other signals

  • driving programs for personalization systems
  • partnering with ML/Data Science on ranking and modeling
  • using GenAI as a default PgM tool
  • prototyping AI-assisted helpers