Data Engineering Project Intern (Ads Targeting) - 2027 Start San Jose Project Intern

TikTok; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 62,000 - 83,000; Part time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Paid holidays

Housing allowance

Job summary

TikTok in San Jose is seeking a Data Engineering Project Intern (Ads Targeting) for a 2027 start. You will work with the Ads Core team to build targeting data and platform capabilities, including geo, gender, age, device, language, and audience tagging pipelines.

This fast-paced internship offers hands-on experience with batch and streaming jobs (Hive/Spark, Flink/Kafka), data quality improvements, and stable data services for ads delivery.

Qualifications

• Pursuing undergraduate or master's in CS/Data Eng/IS.
• Strong SQL and data modeling fundamentals.
• Proficient in Java/Scala/Python.
• Familiar with Hive/Spark/Flink/Kafka/Airflow.
• Detail-oriented with data definitions and quality governance.
• Preferred: experience with user profiles, tagging systems, DMP/CDP, ads or recommender data pipelines.
• Exposure to privacy, anonymization and access control.

Responsibilities

• Build targeting data and platform capabilities: gender, age, geo, device, language.
• Assist in user profile tagging pipelines: ingestion, cleaning, tag generation.
• Develop batch and streaming jobs: Hive/Spark or Flink/Kafka.
• Improve data quality: checks, latency monitoring, anomaly alerts.
• Provide stable data services to ads systems: audience packages, tag queries.

Skills

SQL

Data modeling

Java/Scala/Python

Hive/Spark/Flink/Kafka/Airflow

Detail-oriented

Education

Undergraduate/ Master’s in CS/Data Engineering/IS

Tools

Hive

Spark

Flink

Kafka

Airflow

Job description

Discover a career that energizes and excites you every day.

@2026 TikTok

Technology

Data Engineering Project Intern (Ads Targeting) - 2027 Start

Location:

San Jose

Employment Type:

Intern

Job Code:

A75836

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Responsibilities

Ads Core team is chartered to build key monetization components across various ad delivery stages:1. We build up ranking, bidding, budget, format, diagnosis and other frameworks that serve as a mid platform to enable other ad teams to iterate their products in parallel.2. We implement outstanding traffic strategies to maximize revenue under the constraint of user experience and achieve complete exploration of advertiser's audience.3. Our model driven automation solutions optimize ad delivery performance from end to end.As a Project Intern, you will contribute to impactful short-term projects and gain hands‑on experience in a fast‑paced, professional environment. This internship offers the opportunity to develop practical skills, apply your knowledge to real-world challenges, and explore your career interests.

Responsibilities- Help build foundational targeting data and platform capabilities, including:

• Gender, age buckets, geo targeting (country/region/city/POI/lat-long), device/OS, language, etc
• Assist in user profile/targeting tag pipelines: ingestion, cleaning, definition alignment, tag generation and refresh.
• Develop batch and streaming jobs (depending on stack): offline (Hive/Spark), real-time (Flink/Kafka).
• Improve data quality: consistency checks, latency monitoring, anomaly alerting, backfill and remediation.
• Provide stable data services to ads delivery/strategy systems: audience packages, tag query, targeting rule parsing (with mentorship).

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• Currently pursuing a Undergraduate/ Master's in CS/Data Engineering/IS or or a related discipline.
• Strong SQL and solid data modeling fundamentals.
• Proficient in at least one language: Java/Scala/Python.
• Familiar with parts of big data ecosystem (Hive/Spark/Flink/Kafka/Airflow) is a plus.
• Detail-oriented; comfortable working on data definitions and quality governance.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with user profiles, tagging systems, DMP/CDP, ads or recommender data pipelines.
• Exposure to privacy, anonymization, access control (as needed).

Job Information

The hourly rate range for this position in the selected city is $45- $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:

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:

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

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

3. 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