AI Infrastructure Engineer Intern (Algorithm Infrastructure) - 2027 Start (PhD)

TikTok; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 70,000 - 95,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Life insurance

Wellbeing benefits

Paid holidays

Housing allowance

Job summary

TikTok is offering a PhD internship focused on building and optimizing the inference infrastructure for ultra-large-scale AI systems. You will work on distributed serving, global scheduling, and low-latency inference across heterogeneous compute resources.

Ideal candidates are pursuing a PhD and have strong system design and performance optimization skills, with experience in CUDA, Triton, and distributed microservices.

Qualifications

• Currently pursuing a PhD in Software Development, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• Familiarity with large-model architectures and strong system design skills for complex, high-concurrency environments.
• Strong engineering skills in performance optimization and production system development.
• Strong understanding of asynchronous scheduling, resource pooling, and load balancing in distributed microservice systems (preferred).

Responsibilities

• Build and evolve next-generation inference systems for large-scale online traffic, including global scheduling across heterogeneous compute resources, high-concurrency load balancing, and efficient batch formation.
• Optimize distributed inference for 200B+ models and complex multimodal models through TP, EP, DP, and related strategies to improve throughput and latency in production.
• Develop high-performance kernels for frontier model architectures such as MoE, emerging attention mechanisms, and multimodal fusion layers using CUDA, Triton, and related tools.
• Explore AI-driven infrastructure for inference systems, including AI Agents for kernel optimization, performance tuning, consistency validation, deployment pipelines, and intelligent operations.

Skills

Large-model architectures

System design

Performance optimization

Distributed systems

Education

PhD in Software Development/Computer Science/Computer Engineering

Tools

CUDA

Triton

Job description

Responsibilities

TikTok is an international short video platform available in over 150 countries and regions, where we aim to inspire creativity and bring joy by helping people discover authentic and interesting moments. TikTok has offices around the world, with global headquarters in Los Angeles and Singapore, and additional offices in New York, London, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo, among others.

We are dedicated to building the inference infrastructure for ultra-large-scale language models, vision-language models, and frontier multimodal AI systems. Our mission is to provide a robust, scalable, and high-performance foundation for distributed serving, heterogeneous scheduling, and low-latency inference at massive scale. You will work on some of the most challenging problems in large-model online serving, spanning traffic orchestration, throughput and latency optimization, kernel efficiency, and production reliability for next generation AI systems.

We are looking for talented individuals to join us for an internship. PhD internships at Our Company provide students with the opportunity to actively contribute to our products and research, as well as to the organization\'s future plans and emerging technologies.

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

• Build and evolve next-generation inference systems for large-scale online traffic, including global scheduling across heterogeneous compute resources, high-concurrency load balancing, and efficient batch formation


• Optimize distributed inference for 200B+ models and complex multimodal models through TP, EP, DP, and related strategies to improve throughput and latency in production


• Develop high-performance kernels for frontier model architectures such as MoE, emerging attention mechanisms, and multimodal fusion layers using CUDA, Triton, and related tools


• Explore AI-driven infrastructure for inference systems, including AI Agents for kernel optimization, performance tuning, consistency validation, deployment pipelines, and intelligent operations

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• Currently pursuing a PhD in Software Development, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Mathematics, or related fields


• Familiarity with large-model architectures and strong system design skills for complex, high-concurrency environments


• Strong engineering skills in performance optimization and production system development

Preferred Qualifications

• Strong understanding of asynchronous scheduling, resource pooling, and load balancing in distributed microservice systems

Job Information

【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Hourly) - Campus Intern

The hourly rate range for this position in the selected city is $60- $60.

Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Interns have day one access to health insurance, life insurance, wellbeing benefits and more. Interns also receive 10 paid holidays per year and paid sick time (56 hours if hired in first half of year, 40 if hired in second half of year). Interns who are not working 100% remote may also be eligible for housing allowance.

The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.

For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates

• Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;


• Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and


• Exercising sound judgment.

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.

TikTok Accommodation

TikTok is committed to providing reasonable accommodations in our recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, sincerely held religious beliefs or other reasons protected by applicable laws. If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at https://tinyurl.com/RA-request