Machine Learning Engineer (Ads Core) - User Experience

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

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) with company match

Paid parental leave

Job summary

TikTok is hiring a Machine Learning Engineer for the Ads Core team focused on User Experience in San Jose. You will work on ranking, bidding, and optimization to balance ad revenue with user experience. Strong ML/DL background and experience with TensorFlow or PyTorch are essential.

You will participate in end-to-end development, model improvements, and cross-team collaboration while shaping monetization strategies and ad ecosystem health.

Qualifications

• Strong coding skills with solid data structures and algorithms knowledge.
• Hands-on experience in machine learning and deep learning.
• Excellent communication and teamwork in a fast-paced environment.

Responsibilities

• Develop and optimize ML models for ads core user experience across TikTok platforms.
• Lead end-to-end technical iterations for ad experience optimization, including sorting, duplication governance, and strategy scheduling.
• Explore user behavior feedback to identify UX issues and drive system improvements.
• Apply LLM-based capabilities to ads content understanding and multimodal representations.

Skills

Coding & algorithms

ML & DL fundamentals

Communication & teamwork

Problem solving

Tools

TensorFlow

PyTorch

Job description

Discover a career that energizes and excites you every day.

@2026 TikTok

Technology

Machine Learning Engineer (Ads Core) - User Experience

Location:

San Jose

Employment Type:

Regular

Job Code:

A125346

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Responsibilities

Ads Core team is chartered to build key monetization components across various ad delivery stages:

• 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.
• We implement outstanding traffic strategies to maximize revenue under the constraint of user experience and achieve complete exploration of advertiser's audience.
• Our model driven automation solutions optimize ad delivery performance from end to end.

• Participate in and take charge of algorithm optimization for user ad experience in TikTok's global business, optimize the conversion efficiency between ad revenue and user experience by intervening in the ad bidding and ranking logic via signals, and realize the sustainable and sound development of the ad ecosystem.
• Responsible for the end-to-end technical iteration of advertising experience optimization, covering three core modules: sorting upgrade, duplication governance, and crowd strategy scheduling, and continuously improve the collaborative efficiency of experience and monetization through underlying model infrastructure and strategy innovation.
• Deeply explore user behavior feedback and experience pain points, and systematically solve core user experience issues through end-to-end technology upgrade, covering areas including engagement model optimization, implementation of personalized frequency distribution, and upgrade of user sensitivity modeling.
• Lead the underlying capability building based on LLM, implement user intent recognition and semantic understanding technology for advertising content, integrate multimodal representation capabilities with the large model as the core, and provide core capability support for end-to-end experience optimization strategies.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• Possess excellent coding skills, solid foundation in data structures and algorithms, as well as solid theoretical knowledge and practical experience in machine learning and deep learning.
• Be familiar with at least one mainstream deep learning programming framework (TensorFlow/PyTorch), and have a good command of its underlying architecture and implementation mechanism.
• Excellent ability to analyze and solve problems, with a strong passion for tackling challenging issues.
• Have a passion for technology, as well as excellent communication skills and team spirit.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Have work experience related to models or customer ecosystem in advertising and recommendation scenarios.
• Have published papers at relevant conferences such as ICML, NIPS, ICLR, RecSys, KDD, etc.
• Experience in open-source communities of deep learning programming frameworks.

Job Information

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $218400 - $480000 annually.

Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units.

Benefits

• Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others.
• Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure).

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