Generative AI Search Scientist

TikTok Inc.; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 218,000 - 480,000; Full time

Job summary

TikTok Inc. in California is looking for a campus-hire researcher to join the Search team. You will work with engineers and researchers to advance AI-native search across TikTok's multimodal ecosystem, from content understanding to ranking and user experience optimization.

You will develop scalable AI search systems using large models, improve personalization and relevance, and collaborate to ship research into production. A PhD or current PhD student with strong ML/NLP experience is expected.

Qualifications

• PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related technical discipline.
• Solid foundation in ML, DL, or IR.
• Experience in LLMs, search/recommendation, ranking, NLP, or multimodal learning.
• Strong Python programming and ML framework familiarity (PyTorch, TensorFlow).
• Demonstrated research ability via publications, projects, or internships.
• Strong problem-solving and collaborative skills.

Responsibilities

• Develop next-generation AI search systems using large models (LLMs).
• Improve ranking, personalization, and relevance in search.
• Build generative and multimodal search models (video, text, image).
• Explore LLM-based agents for complex and multi-turn queries.
• Optimize large-scale retrieval and ranking performance.
• Collaborate cross-functionally to ship research into production.

Skills

Python

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Machine Learning

Deep Learning

Information Retrieval

LLMs

Search/Recommender Systems

NLP

Multimodal Learning

Publications/Research

Problem Solving

Collaboration

Education

PhD in Computer Science/Engineering or related

Job description

TikTok Inc. in California is looking for a campus-hire researcher to join the Search team. You will work with engineers and researchers to advance AI-native search across TikTok's multimodal ecosystem, from content understanding to ranking and user experience optimization.

You will develop scalable AI search systems using large models, improve personalization and relevance, and collaborate to ship research into production. A PhD or current PhD student with strong ML/NLP experience is expected.