1 Popular internship programs at Pinterest
Pinterest calls its interns “Pinterns,” and its programs are structured to deliver real product impact, close mentorship, and a healthy pipeline into full-time roles. Each summer cohort runs for 12 weeks (fall tracks exist for some teams), offers competitive pay and housing or relocation support, and starts with “Pin Prep” onboarding and a dedicated mentor.
1.1 Software Engineer Pintern Program
This program is designed to give aspiring engineers direct exposure to the scale and complexity of consumer technology systems. Interns are placed on real feature teams where they experience how products are built, tested, and shipped. The program offers structured participation in design reviews, access to established engineering frameworks, and training in best practices around scalability, reliability, and performance. A key highlight is Capstone Demo Day, where Pinterns present their work to a wider audience, giving them practice in technical communication and visibility within the company.
1.2 PhD Machine Learning Internship
This track provides doctoral candidates with a rare opportunity to translate advanced research into applied solutions. The program offers access to datasets, experimentation environments, and collaboration with scientists from Pinterest Labs who are working on state-of-the-art models in recommendation, ads relevance, and visual search. Interns gain the chance to see how research informs product, while still operating within an environment that values publication and knowledge sharing. This makes the program especially attractive to those seeking a bridge between academia and industry research.
1.3 Data Science Internship
Pinterest’s Data Science internship is structured to teach how data drives strategy in a high-scale consumer platform. Interns are given frameworks for running large-scale experiments, guidance on how success metrics are designed, and training on how to translate analysis into actionable product decisions. The program is designed to show participants not only how to process data but also how to align insights with company goals. It is less about crunching numbers in isolation and more about being part of the decision-making pipeline.
1.4 Product Design Internship
The design program offers access to Pinterest’s design systems, research practices, and usability frameworks. Interns are guided through end-to-end design cycles, from wireframing to prototyping to testing for accessibility. They are supported by experienced mentors who emphasize design critiques as a core learning mechanism. The program gives participants hands-on experience with industry-standard tools like Figma, while also providing a clear understanding of how design integrates with engineering and product functions in a large company.
1.5 Product Management Internship
This program is structured to build strategic thinking, planning, and execution skills. PM interns are trained in defining roadmaps, prioritizing competing requests, and guiding multidisciplinary teams through sprint cycles. The offering is less about assigning tasks and more about developing frameworks for decision-making. Participants gain exposure to user research methods, product analytics, and trade-off analysis, all within the context of a live technology company. It is positioned as a direct training ground for future product leaders.
1.6 Sales & Partnerships Internship
1.7 Trust & Safety Policy Internship
The Trust & Safety track offers structured learning in policy creation, enforcement, and content governance. Interns are exposed to the process of drafting content policies, testing them in real-world scenarios, and working alongside machine learning teams to refine abuse detection. The program highlights how safety challenges are managed at scale, giving students a clear picture of the intersection between technology, law, and policy. It provides valuable preparation for roles in public policy, regulatory affairs, or online safety.
1.8 Pinterest Apprenticeship Program
Unlike the standard Pinternship tracks, the Apprenticeship Program is tailored for career-switchers, bootcamp graduates, or individuals from non-traditional backgrounds. It runs for up to one year, offering participants the same responsibilities as full-time employees. The program includes structured milestones, regular performance reviews, and a clear pathway to conversion into permanent roles. It is designed not just as a temporary learning experience but as a career transition program with long-term potential.
2 Popular roles for interns at Pinterest
1. Software Engineer Intern: Software engineering Pinterns join one of Pinterest’s core product teams and ship user-facing features that reach hundreds of millions of monthly active users., They participate fully in code reviews, own test coverage for their components, and deploy behind feature flags so they can analyze real-time impact with internal dashboards. By demo day, most Pinterns can point to at least one feature or performance improvement that has already rolled out to the live app.
2. Machine Learning Intern: ML Pinterns work inside Pinterest Labs or the broader Search & Discovery org, focusing on ranking, recommendation, and computer-vision problems. Day-to-day work includes gathering large-scale training data, experimenting with deep-learning architectures in PyTorch, running offline evaluations, and shipping A/B tests that target click-through-rate lift or session duration.
3. Data Scientist Intern: They design telemetry, build ETL pipelines in Spark or Trino, and define guardrail metrics that guide feature rollouts. Interns create dashboards in Looker, run causal inference studies to separate correlation from impact, and brief leadership on findings that drive quarterly OKRs.
4. Product Designer Intern: Design Pinterns sit with the XD (Experience Design) group and own end-to-end flows from discovery research through high-fidelity mock-ups. They conduct competitive audits, host Figma jam sessions with engineers, and validate usability via unmoderated Maze tests or on-device prototypes. Accessibility, motion guidelines, and design-system token updates are recurring themes.
5. Product Manager Intern: PM Pinterns drive cross-functional pods responsible for launching features such as creator tools, ads formats, or shopping integrations. Responsibilities include crafting PRD documents, aligning stakeholders in sprint kickoff, prioritizing backlog items based on impact versus effort, and setting success metrics.
6. Sales Analyst Intern: Their work spans pulling campaign performance data, building Excel and Looker dashboards, surfacing creative insights that improve ROI, and participating in client pitches. Interns also learn Pinterest’s ad auction dynamics and collaborate with measurement leads to craft test-and-learn plans.
7. Trust and Safety Policy Intern: They collaborate with machine-learning engineers to improve abuse-detection signals and participate in post-incident reviews when high-profile moderation issues arise.
8. Apprenticeship Engineer (Non-traditional Track): The Pinterest Apprenticeship is a longer program, typically lasting nine to twelve months, and is designed for career switchers or boot-camp graduates. Apprentices rotate through two feature teams, follow structured learning plans, and pair with senior engineers to deepen their skills in data structures, system design, and code quality. Progress is measured through milestone projects that match full-time expectations, and successful apprentices convert to engineering roles with clear career ladders.
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