Backend Engineer Graduate (Recommendation Architecture) - 2026 Start (PhD)

BYTEDANCE PTE. LTD.; Singapore; On-site; SGD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

ByteDance is seeking a research-focused engineer to advance the architecture of its recommendation system. You will help design, optimize, and evaluate scalable strategies that improve user experience while controlling costs.

The role involves cross-domain data, data quality, and privacy as part of building a robust, high-performance data and service platform. Qualifications include a PhD in CS/SE or related field, strong programming skills in Python and C/C++, and proven research results in

Qualifications

• PhD completed or near completion in Software Development, CS, or related technical discipline.
• Strong research results in NLP, CV, data modeling, or algorithm optimization.
• Excellent programming abilities with data structures and fundamental algorithms; Python for intelligent coding, C/C++ for traditional coding.

Responsibilities

• Strategy and optimization of recommendation system architecture and evaluation.
• Adaptive tuning and fault diagnosis for large-scale systems.
• Cost-efficiency balancing for model training and operation.
• Cross-domain data processing with data quality and privacy in mind.
• Develop high-performance storage engines and schema evolution mechanisms.
• Build multimodal data frameworks and Python-based developer ecosystem.
• Collaborate with algorithm and data teams to improve user experience.

Skills

Python

C/C++

Data structures

Algorithms

Communication

Education

PhD in CS/SE

Job description

Responsibilities

Team Introduction Our Recommendation Architecture Team is responsible for building and optimizing the architecture of the recommendation system to provide the most stable and best experience for users. The team focuses on optimizing the recommendation system architecture, ensuring stability and high availability, and improving the performance of both online services and offline data flows. Collaborating with the algorithm team, we work to enhance recommendation effectiveness and user experience, boost system performance while reducing costs, build data and service mid-platforms, and realize flexible and scalable high-performance storage and computing systems. We are looking for talented individuals to join our team in 2026. As a graduate, you will get opportunities to pursue bold ideas, tackle complex challenges, and unlock limitless growth. Launch your career where inspiration is infinite at our Company. Successful candidates must be able to commit to an onboarding date by end of year 2026. Please state your availability and graduation date clearly in your resume.

1. Strategy Management and Optimization: Build an intelligent system to achieve standardized definition of recommendation strategies, long-term and offline evaluation, automatic identification and retirement of ineffective strategies, and removal of related code configurations.
2. Adaptive Tuning and Fault Diagnosis: Leverage large model capabilities to optimize parameters and configurations of systems and underlying components for diverse business loads in recommendation systems. Explore adaptive fault diagnosis solutions to provide global perspective for fault tracking, localization, and analysis.
3. Cost-Efficiency Balance: Address the high costs of model training and operation when applying generative technologies to recommendation systems, balancing costs and efficiency to achieve effective recommendation within limited resources.
4. Cross-Domain Data Processing: Handle massive heterogeneous data in horizontal cross-domain scenarios (e.g., e-commerce), improve and ensure data quality and accuracy, standardize data supply for cross-domain recommendation models, and enable low-cost cross-terminal services. Meanwhile, ensure data privacy, security, and compliance.
5. Data Storage and Quality Enhancement: Develop low-cost, high-performance storage engines, design flexible Schema Evolution mechanisms, achieve high-concurrency real-time data writing and training-inference consistency. Deeply explore the quantitative relationship between data quality and model prediction performance, and build data-model correlation analysis tools and automated training data processing pipelines based on the DCAI (Data-Centric AI) concept.
6. Multimodal Data and Heterogeneous Computing: Construct a multimodal data heterogeneous computing framework for recommendation systems to solve challenges in data reading, framework integration, and high-performance operator orchestration, improving data processing and model training efficiency. Establish a developer ecosystem centered on Python.
7. Large-scale computing Model Efficiency Optimization for Recommendation: With continuous breakthroughs of large models in CV/NLP/multimodal fields and even towards AGI, large computing-driven recommendation scenarios enable models to more comprehensively and profoundly understand user preferences, thereby better interpreting user needs, excavating latent interests, and delivering superior user experiences. Larger-scale recommendation models demand greater computing. To balance computing overhead and effectiveness gains requires in-depth Co-Design by architecture and algorithm engineers.

Qualifications

• Individuals who are completing or have recently completed a PhD degree in Software Development, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• Priority will be given to candidates with in-depth research results and extensive practical experience in relevant fields, such as outstanding performance in natural language processing, computer vision, data modeling, or algorithm optimization, etc.
• Excellent programming abilities with a strong command of data structures and fundamental algorithms. For traditional coding roles, proficiency in C/C++ is required; for intelligent coding roles, proficiency in Python is required.

Preferred Qualification

• Ability to effectively communicate and collaborate with team members, such as algorithm engineers, data analysts, and product managers, to explore new technologies and drive innovation in e-commerce generative recommendation systems.

Job Information

About Us

Founded in 2012, ByteDance's mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. With a suite of more than a dozen products, including TikTok, Lemon8, CapCut and Pico as well as platforms specific to the China market, including Toutiao, Douyin, and Xigua, ByteDance has made it easier and more fun for people to connect with, consume, and create content.

Why Join ByteDance

Inspiring creativity is at the core of ByteDance's mission. Our innovative products are built to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect - and our global, diverse teams make that possible. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and enrich life - a mission we work towards every day.

As ByteDancers, we strive to do great things with great people. We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. By constantly iterating and fostering an "Always Day 1" mindset, we achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our Company, and our users. When we create and grow together, the possibilities are limitless. Join us.

Diversity & Inclusion

ByteDance is committed to creating an inclusive space where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. Our platform connects people from across the globe and so does our workplace. At ByteDance, our mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. To achieve that goal, we are committed to celebrating our diverse voices and to creating an environment that reflects the many communities we reach. We are passionate about this and hope you are too.