Pinterest is hiring in Toronto to find AI talent

Pinterest is looking to expand its business in Canada and tap into the country's artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) talent as it develops a strategic plan to transform the platform into a place of commerce, Chief Technology Officer Jeremy King said. .

“You have an incredible talent for machine learning in Toronto,” King told BetaKit. “I can't stress enough that every team has machine learning engineers, so we need as many machine learning engineers as possible.”

“We're continually impressed with the level of engineering talent in the market, and we want to continue to invest in the region.”

Jeremy King
CTO of Pinterest

The San Francisco-based company is hiring for 40 engineering roles out of 80 people in its Toronto office — one of its main engineering hubs, King said — and aims to fill the positions by the end of the year.

Post-secondary institutions such as Canada's University of Waterloo, University of Toronto and McGill University produce “the best machine learning talent in the world,” King said, and harnessing that talent to develop product capabilities is critical. the role of the business in achieving high profitability goals.

“We've been consistently impressed by the engineering talent in the market, and we want to continue to invest in the region,” said the CTO.

Canada and the United States accounted for the company's most revenue in fiscal 2022, bringing in $2.3 billion in sales, but about 80 percent of users on the platform come from outside the U.S., which accounted for about 20 percent of sales. This is a segment of Pinterest users that CEO William J. Reddy described the company as “the least profitable” to analysts during the company's latest quarterly earnings call. It also sees “significant opportunity” to increase average revenue per user.

“With more than half of Pinterest users looking to us as a place to shop, our goal is to make everything people see on Pinterest shoppable,” said King.

When the Toronto office first opened in 2019 (the same year Pinterest went public), it focused on the platform's buying capabilities, but has since worked on advertiser tools, delivering products to the platform, and engineering projects. it helps retailers upload their products to the platform.

“Shopping is a big focus for us this year, and we'll continue to make it easier for merchants and brands to showcase their products on Pinterest and for users to shop,” King said, adding that Toronto-based engineers will continue to work on machine learning. “The core of what makes Pinterest” are products.