CTO Jeremy King said the company aims to use AI and ML to make Pinterest more “shoppable.”
As Pinterest looks to expand in Canada, it is embarking on a strategic plan to tap into the country's artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) talent and make the platform more of a shopping destination, said Chief Technology Officer Jeremy King.
“There's a lot of amazing machine learning talent in Toronto,” King said in an interview with BetaKit. “I can't stress enough the importance of having a machine learning engineer on every team, so we need as many of them as we can get.”
“We are continually impressed with the high level of engineering talent in the market and look forward to continuing to invest in the region.”
Jeremy King
CTO of Pinterest
The San Francisco-based company is hiring for 40 engineering positions in its Toronto office, one of its major engineering hubs, to add to the 80 existing positions, and aims to fill the positions by the end of the year, King said.
King said Canadian higher education institutions such as the University of Waterloo, University of Toronto and McGill University are producing “some of the best machine learning talent in the world,” and leveraging that talent to build product capabilities will play a key role in driving the company's goal of improving profitability.
“We are continually impressed with the level of engineering talent in the market and look forward to continuing to invest in the region,” the CTO said.
Canada and the U.S. drove most of the company's revenue in fiscal 2022, bringing in $2.3 billion, but about 80% of the platform's users are outside the U.S., generating roughly 20% of revenue. It's a segment of users that Pinterest CEO William J. Ready described to analysts during the company's most recent quarterly earnings call as the “least monetized.” And he believes there's a “meaningful opportunity” to increase average revenue per user.
“More than half of Pinterest users consider Pinterest a place to shop, so our vision is to make everything you see on Pinterest shoppable,” King said.
The Toronto office was initially focused on the platform's shopping features when it opened in 2019 (the same year Pinterest went public), but has since grown to include working on advertiser tools, shipping products for the platform globally, and engineers working on projects to help retailers load their own products onto the platform.
“Shopping is a key focus for us this year and we continue to make it easier for merchants and brands to feature their products on Pinterest and for users to buy,” King said, adding that engineers in Toronto will continue developing machine learning products “that are at the core of Pinterest.”
