Multimodal Algo Researcher (AI Innovation Center) Intern - 2026 Soaring Star Talent Program

Tiktok; Singapore; On-site; SGD 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading social media platform in Singapore seeks researchers to explore cutting-edge AI technologies, especially in multimodal LLMs. Candidates should hold a PhD with strong coding abilities and a solid background in machine learning. The role requires problem-solving skills and passion for technology. This position provides an opportunity to engage in innovative challenges while contributing to a dynamic environment that values creativity and collaboration.

Qualifications

• A PhD degree with top AI conference papers in ML/CV/NLP are required.
• In‑depth research experience in machine learning, particularly in LLMs.
• Proficient in C/C++ or Python, winners of ACM/ICPC, NOI/IOI, etc. preferred.

Skills

Excellent coding ability

Data structures

Fundamental algorithm skills

Proficient in C/C++ or Python

Problem-solving skills

Education

PhD degree in ML/CV/NLP

Job description

Responsibilities

About The Team: The mission of the TikTok Eng‑AI Innovation Center is to explore cutting‑edge AGI technologies, including but not limited to LLM, multi‑modal LLM (video/image/audio/text/code), etc., to let machine better understand user creations on TikTok platform. Regarding video/image/audio/text, enhanced content understanding can bring better user experience of searching, recommendation, and can more accurately identify and defend internet abuse and fraud on our platform. Regarding code, our developed LLM aims to automatically re‑organize/optimize TikTok codebase, and make the code/coding more accessible for TikTok engineers.

Project Introduction

Multimodal foundation large models (VLM) represent a research hotspot in the industry and a critical technology for TikTok's business scenario applications. In 2024, TikTok's Innovation Center developed VFM V1, a multimodal large model tailored for TikTok's business scenarios. It matches the performance of the best open‑source model Qwen VL on public test sets, while significantly outperforming all other foundation models on TikTok's business test sets. In the future, we aim to continuously develop foundation models with efficient perception and reasoning capabilities, capable of handling multilingual and massive video content understanding algorithms to deliver a better content consumption experience for users.

Project Challenges

Enhance the multimodal perception encoder: The current encoder uses a fixed frame rate. We need to explore more efficient adaptive frame rates while considering the integration of modalities such as audio and user behavior.

How to fuse multimodal perception and thinking capabilities to promote stronger comprehensive perception and cognitive abilities of the model.

Minimum Qualifications

• A PhD degree with top AI conference papers in ML/CV/NLP are required.
• Excellent coding ability, data structures, and fundamental algorithm skills, proficient in C/C++ or Python, winners of competitions such as ACM/ICPC, NOI/IOI, TopCoder, Kaggle, etc. are preferred.
• In‑depth research experience in machine learning, with a particular emphasis on large language models (LLMs) and generative AI.
• Excellent ability to analyze and solve problems, and be passionate about solving challenging problems.

Preferred Qualifications

• Passion for technology, good communication skills and team spirit.

If you have any questions, please reach out to us at [e-mail].

Job Information

About TikTok: TikTok is the leading destination for short‑form mobile video. At TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. TikTok's global headquarters are in Los Angeles and Singapore, and we also have offices in New York City, London, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo.

Why Join Us

Inspiring creativity is at the core of TikTok's mission. Our innovative product is 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 bring joy – a mission we work towards every day.

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. Every challenge is an opportunity to learn and innovate as one team. We're resilient and embrace challenges as they come. 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

TikTok 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 TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. 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.