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

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

Job summary

TikTok is building the Recommendation Foundation Models within its Data – Global E-commerce organization, advancing beyond click prediction to general-purpose recommendations. You will contribute to training, modeling, and deploying multimodal systems and LLM-driven strategies in a highly collaborative environment.

As a candidate, you should have a strong ML background, Python proficiency, and experience with PyTorch, plus a research mindset and engineering skills to ship impactful models at

Qualifications

• PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics or related field.
• Strong foundation in machine learning and deep learning, with interest in LLMs/generative recommendation.
• Proficiency in Python and experience with PyTorch.
• Self-driven with a strong research mindset and solid engineering skills.

Responsibilities

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

Skills

Python

Machine Learning

Research mindset

Education

PhD in Computer Science or related field

Tools

PyTorch

Job description

Responsibilities

The Recommendation Foundation team within TikTok’s Data – Global E-commerce organization is dedicated to building shared Recommendation Foundation Models across scenarios. We are exploring an event-sequence-driven generative recommendation paradigm that deeply integrates large language and vision-language models (LLMs/VLMs), multimodal understanding, reinforcement learning, and system optimization, advancing recommendation systems beyond click prediction toward general-purpose recommendation agents.

Responsibilities

The Recommendation Foundation team within TikTok’s Data – Global E-commerce organization is dedicated to building shared Recommendation Foundation Models across scenarios. We are exploring an event-sequence-driven generative recommendation paradigm that deeply integrates large language and vision-language models (LLMs/VLMs), multimodal understanding, reinforcement learning, and system optimization, advancing recommendation systems beyond click prediction toward general-purpose recommendation agents.

We believe the future of recommendation is not only about predicting clicks, but about understanding the relationships between people and content and generating new connections. We value original exploration and encourage research thinking and engineering practice equally. Every team member can propose hypotheses and validate ideas in an open environment; your code and publications may help shape the next generation of recommendation systems. We are looking for people with a general-intelligence mindset to redefine recommendation with us.

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.

Responsibilities

• Participate in the full training lifecycle of Recommendation Foundation Models, including pre-training, mid-training, and post-training.
• Design and train multimodal semantic tokenizers for recommendation items, leveraging multimodal foundation models to encode rich item content into discrete semantic tokens and raise the performance ceiling of Recommendation Foundation Models.
• Develop LLM-native recommendation by incorporating recommendation tasks directly into large language model training and leveraging world knowledge to improve recommendation quality.
• Build the next generation of recommendation systems powered by Recommendation Foundation Models, spanning retrieval, ranking, and end-to-end generative recommendation.
  
  

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• Individuals who are completing or have recently completed a PhD degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics or a related discipline.
• Solid foundation in machine learning and deep learning, with strong interest in LLMs and generative recommendation.
• Proficiency in Python and experience with deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch.
• Self-driven, with a strong research mindset and solid engineering skills.
  
  

Preferred Requirement

• Experience with pre-training, mid-training, or post-training of LLMs or Foundation Models.
• Research or project experience in generative recommendation, LLM-native recommendation, or multimodal semantic tokenization.
• Publications on LLM-related topics at top-tier machine learning or natural language processing conferences, such as NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP, or NAACL, or strong achievements in major technical competitions.
  
  

Job Information

【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Annually)

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. 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:

• Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;
• Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and
• 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