Research Scientist Intern - End-to-End Generative Search Technology Based on Pre-Trained Founda[...]

TikTok; Singapore; On-site; SGD 33,480 - 55,800; Full time

Job summary

TikTok is seeking a PhD Intern in Singapore for 2027 to contribute to the search team. This role involves enhancing AI-powered search capabilities through hands-on experience with modern machine learning methods. Ideal candidates will be currently pursuing a PhD in relevant fields such as Computer Science or AI with a strong focus on deep learning and algorithms. The internship offers a blend of professional development and the chance to influence future technologies.

Qualifications

• Solid understanding of data structures, algorithms, and mathematical modeling.
• Research experience in Deep Learning, NLP, CV, Reinforcement Learning, or Generative Models.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to building and owning TikTok's search engine.
• Explore integration of foundation models with ranking algorithms.
• Address industry challenges in AI-powered search.

Skills

AI/ML Expertise

Programming Abilities

Strong Communication Skills

Teamwork Skills

Resilience

Education

Currently pursuing PhD in Computer Science, AI, Mathematics, or related discipline

Job description

Responsibilities

We are looking for talented individuals to join us for an internship in 2027. PhD Internships at our Company aim to provide students with the opportunity to actively contribute to our products and research, and to the organization's future plans and emerging technologies.

Our dynamic internship experience blends hands‑on learning, enriching community‑building and development events, and collaboration with industry experts.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis - we encourage you to apply early. Please state your availability clearly in your resume (Start date, End date).

Team Introduction: Our Search Team is responsible for building and owning our search engine which provides our users the best search experience. On the Search Team, you’ll have the opportunity to build a full‑stack search engine system and combine information retrieval technology with modern machine learning methods from related fields such as NLP, Computer Vision, Multimodal, and Recommender Systems. We embrace a culture of self‑direction, intellectual curiosity, openness, and problem‑solving.

Topic Content

With the rapid advancement of foundation model technology, the field of AI‑powered search is encountering new opportunities and challenges. Traditional search technologies have begun to reveal significant limitations when confronted with massive data volumes, multimodal information, and complex multi‑turn user needs. It is therefore necessary to leverage foundation models to build next‑generation AI search systems, enhancing the intelligence of search systems and optimizing user experience.

• Explore the integration of foundation models with ranking algorithms to improve personalized ranking accuracy and user experience.
• Explore end‑to‑end generative search models based on multimodal pre‑training.
• Explore LLM‑based agent technology to improve user satisfaction under complex ambiguous queries and multi‑turn search scenarios.

Topic Challenges

• Personalized ranking: Traditional ranking algorithms struggle to fully leverage multimodal information, and their limited model complexity fails to meet user demands for precise and personalized search.
• Ultra‑large‑scale retrieval and ranking: Traditional discriminative cascaded ranking systems cannot meet the efficiency requirements for retrieval and ranking across hundred‑billion‑scale candidate pools.
• Increasingly complex search needs: User search needs are growing increasingly complex. Traditional search frameworks struggle to accurately understand the semantics of long, complex, and ambiguous queries in multi‑turn conversations, resulting in low search result satisfaction.

Topic Value

• Technical value: Break through the bottlenecks of traditional search technology; build a next‑generation AI search architecture driven by LLM agents; and address industry challenges including personalized ranking, ultra‑large‑scale retrieval and ranking, and understanding and fulfilling complex search needs.
• Business value: Significantly improve search user experience and satisfaction, driving improvements in search LT and users' proactive search intent.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• Currently pursuing PhD in Computer Science, AI, Mathematics, or a related technical discipline, with a strong foundation in data structures, algorithms, and mathematical modeling.
• AI/ML Expertise: Solid understanding and research experience in Deep Learning, NLP, CV, Reinforcement Learning, Generative Models, or Multimodal Learning.

Preferred Qualifications

• Priority will be given to candidates with publications in international AI/CS conferences or journals (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ACL, KDD, SIGIR, WWW) or top rankings in recognized algorithmic competitions.
• Excellent programming abilities in leading or participating in key projects related to Search, Advertising, Recommendation systems, or Large Language Models (LLMs).
• Strong resilience, excellent communication and teamwork skills; passionate about technology, willing to embrace challenges with the team, and a drive for innovation.