Staff Technical Program Manager, Search Relevance

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

This role is for a Staff Technical Program Manager on the Search team at Pinterest. The TPM will be a thought leader with Product and Engineering, focusing on crafting a seamless search and shopping experience. Key responsibilities include defining and driving ML/AI programs, leading program management for multiple work streams, analyzing data to steer strategy, building expertise in query understanding and search engines, and driving product/business requirements. A significant aspect of the role involves using GenAI as the default operating model for program management execution, including producing AI-assisted drafts, modernizing workflows, and synthesizing signals to surface risks. The TPM will also prototype solutions using AI coding assistants and adhere to Pinterest's AI guidance for risk, governance, and safety.

What you'd actually do

  1. Establish and own relationships with key partners across Search teams as their strategic and execution partner for delivering high impact programs.
  2. Define and drive Search, Relevance, and Merchant ML/AI programs based on current and emerging needs, ensuring scope, responsibilities, and ownership are well-established, risks are proactively identified and mitigated and that programs are executed and landed successfully.
  3. Lead the day-to-day program management of multiple work streams across the product process, including product strategy, technical design, and experimentation.
  4. Analyze merchant distribution and shopping experiences in partnership with Data Science; leverage these insights to lead strategy steering committees with cross-functional VPs.
  5. Build a subject-matter-expertise on query understanding and search engines.

Skills

Required

  • BS in a technical discipline or equivalent experience (7+ years in a technical or analytical role)
  • Strong technical breadth and judgment - ability to quickly ramp up and go deep on a range of technologies, ability to identify technical risks and tradeoffs.
  • Comfort with a fast-changing environment and ability to manage ambiguity.
  • Focus on execution and delivery in a data-informed environment.
  • Excellent communication skills and ability to work cross-functionally to identify opportunities and deliver solutions.
  • Exceptional relationship-building skills, organizational awareness, and ability to persuade others to accomplish program objectives while holding yourself and your team to a high standard of accountability.
  • AI-first execution mindset: demonstrated ability to use GenAI to accelerate planning, program operations, and stakeholder communications—starting with AI drafts and applying strong judgment to validate, refine, and drive decisions.
  • Workflow design, AI fluency, data & insights orientation: experience turning repeatable program work into durable, low-toil mechanisms and improving decision-making by using GenAI (e.g., strong prompting, vibe coding lightweight scripts/tools, dashboards, data analysis and leveraging agents where appropriate).
  • Safety-by-design AI fluency: experience operating within AI governance expectations (risk assessment, data handling, model/output validation, policy/compliance).

Nice to have

  • Experience working with Search products at a low level of detail highly desirable.

What the JD emphasized

  • AI-first execution mindset
  • Safety-by-design AI fluency

Other signals

  • AI-first execution mindset
  • Use GenAI as the default operating model for EP PgM execution
  • Prototype solutions to augment decisions through data (e.g. dashboards, data analysis) or simplify processes (e.g. process and workflow helpers, or internal tools) using AI coding assistants