Graduate ML Engineer: Generative Recs & LLMs

TikTok Inc.; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 162,000 - 388,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

401(k)

Parental leave

Disability coverage

Life insurance

Wellbeing benefits

Paid holidays

Sick days

Paid personal time

Job summary

TikTok Inc. is seeking researchers to advance Recommendation Foundation Models within the Data - Global E-commerce organization in San Jose, CA. You will work on event-sequence-driven generative recommendation using LLMs and multimodal models, exploring reinforcement learning and system optimization.

The role emphasizes original exploration, open hypothesis validation, and impactful publications. Graduates will have opportunities to pursue bold ideas with strong growth potential.

Qualifications

• PhD in CS/EE/Math/Stats or related field.
• Strong ML/DL background with interest in LLMs and generative recommendation.
• Proficiency in Python and DL frameworks such as PyTorch.

Responsibilities

• Participate in the full training lifecycle of Recommendation Foundation Models (pre-, mid-, post-training).
• Design and train multimodal semantic tokenizers for recommendation items using foundation models.
• Develop LLM-native recommendation by integrating tasks into LLM training.
• Build next-gen recommendation systems spanning retrieval, ranking, and end-to-end generative recommendation.

Skills

Python

machine learning

deep learning

LLMs

multimodal

reinforcement learning

research mindset

engineering skills

Education

PhD in CS/EE/Math/Stats or related

Tools

PyTorch

Job description

TikTok Inc. is seeking researchers to advance Recommendation Foundation Models within the Data - Global E-commerce organization in San Jose, CA. You will work on event-sequence-driven generative recommendation using LLMs and multimodal models, exploring reinforcement learning and system optimization.

The role emphasizes original exploration, open hypothesis validation, and impactful publications. Graduates will have opportunities to pursue bold ideas with strong growth potential.