Machine Learning Engineer Graduate (E-Commerce Governance) - 2027 Start (PhD)

TikTok; San Jose, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 162,000 - 388,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical

Dental

Vision insurance

401(k) match

Paid parental leave

Disability coverage

Life insurance

Wellbeing benefits

Paid holidays

Paid sick days

Paid Personal Time

Job summary

TikTok is seeking talented researchers to join the Governance and Experience Algorithm team in San Jose. You will work on cutting-edge AI solutions to detect risk and improve platform integrity across e-commerce, shopping, and live content.

A PhD and strong ML/DL background are required, with proficiency in Python/Go/C++ and Linux. Ideal candidates will have experience in NLP/CV or related AI domains, excellent problem-solving skills, and a passion for tackling hard challenges at scale.

Qualifications

• PhD in Software Development, Computer Science, Computer Engineering or related field.
• Strong coding skills in Python, Go, or C++.
• Solid foundation in data structures and algorithms, and ML/DL theory.
• Familiar with NLP, CV, multimodal, graph algorithms, search, data mining, or LLMs.
• Analytical and problem-solving strengths for challenging problems.

Responsibilities

• Support governance/experience with advanced AI tech for e-commerce risk/violation detection.
• Identify algorithms for risk, violations, and low-quality content across products, carts, videos, and live streams.
• Mine and detect fraudulent behaviors and identify risky merchants/creators.
• Optimize algorithms for large-scale brand libraries, products, and content deduplication.
• Contribute to data construction, instruction tuning, CoT, and alignment for large models in e-commerce.
• Explore reinforcement learning and operations research for intelligent dispatching/audit scheduling.

Skills

PhD in related field

Python

Go

C++

Linux

Machine learning theory

Education

PhD in Software Development / CS / CE or related

Job description

Discover a career that energizes and excites you every day.

@2026 TikTok

Technology

Location:

San Jose

Employment Type:

Regular

Job Code:

A62150A

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Responsibilities

The Governance and Experience Algorithm team was established in September 2020 and its main job is to support the following businesses with the most advanced AI technology:

• Combat any kinds of risks/violations issues in E-commerce scenarios.
• Build an E-commerce ecosystem and improve platform service capabilities
• Responsible for identifying algorithms for risk/violation/low-quality issues in e-commerce scenarios such as products, shopping cart short videos, and live streaming with products.
• Responsible for mining and identifying algorithms to detect fraudulent behaviors and identify risky, violated, or low-quality merchants and creators.
• Responsible for optimizing algorithms for large-scale brand libraries, products, and content deduplication/clustering.
• Responsible for data construction, instruction fine-tuning, CoT, alignment, and other work for large models in the e-commerce domain, aiming for ultimate effect optimization in the e-commerce domain.
• Responsible for exploring reinforcement learning and operational research algorithms in intelligent dispatching and intelligent audit scheduling to improve audit quality and efficiency.

We are looking for talented individuals to join our team. As a graduate, you will get opportunities to pursue bold ideas, tackle complex challenges, and unlock limitless growth. Successful candidates must be able to commit to an onboarding date by the end of the year. Please state your availability and graduation date clearly in your resume.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• Individuals who are completing or have recently completed a PhD degree in Software Development, Computer Science, Computer Engineering or a related discipline.
• Solid coding skills, ability to develop in a Linux environment, proficient in Python, Go, or C++
• Solid foundation in data structures/algorithms, proficient in machine learning/deep learning theory, and rich practical experience
• Familiar with 1-2 areas in natural language processing, computer vision, multimodal, graph algorithms, search algorithms, text/data mining, and LLM
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills, passionate about challenging problems

Preferred Qualifications

• Good team spirit and strong communication skills
• Experience in platform governance/audit/risk control/content security or overseas internet/e-commerce business

Job Information

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $162000 - $387600 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 may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location.

Benefits

• medical
• dental
• vision insurance
• 401(k) savings plan with company match
• paid parental leave
• short-term and long-term disability coverage
• life insurance
• wellbeing benefits
• 10 paid holidays per year
• 10 paid sick days per year
• 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure)

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;
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