Machine Learning Engineer Graduate (Recommendations and Search) - 2027 Start (PhD)

TikTok USDS Joint Venture; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 246,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) plan with company match

Paid parental leave

Disability coverage

Life insurance

Wellbeing benefits

10 paid holidays per year

10 paid sick days per year

17 days of Paid Personal Time

Job summary

TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC is seeking PhD-level researchers to develop and scale high-impact ML solutions for recommendations, search relevance, and e-commerce, with strong emphasis on data privacy and security for US users.

Successful candidates will design, train, and evaluate models and deploy robust pipelines while maintaining world-class data governance and compliance. On-site work is expected in a fast-paced, mission-driven team.

Qualifications

• PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, Math or Statistics or related field.
• Strong foundation in data structures, algorithms and software design.
• Solid understanding of machine learning concepts and practice.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, train, and evaluate ML models for recommender systems and search quality.
• Implement scalable pipelines for feature extraction, model training and deployment.
• Process massive user data using distributed systems for real-time and offline features.
• Optimize inference latency and throughput for production services.
• Conduct continuous A/B testing and improve models to meet business goals.

Skills

PhD in CS

DS & Algorithms

Software Design

ML concepts

Education

PhD degree

Job description

Responsibilities

About the team

The Tech and Product team of TikTok USDS is missioned to empower TikTok US users to have a great user experience with strong data security and privacy protections, focusing on compliance, reliability, business and product support, and efficiency improvement.

As part of this team, you will build and scale high-impact Machine Learning solutions—including recommendation engines, search relevance, and e-commerce systems—designed specifically to deliver personalized, high-performing experiences while ensuring world-class data governance, privacy compliance, and system security for US users.

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.

Depending on the team that you'll be considered for, you can expect to:

• Design, build, train, and evaluate machine learning models for recommendation systems, search ranking, query understanding, or conversion prediction.
• Implement efficient pipelines for feature extraction, model training, evaluation, offline-to-online deployment, and A/B testing.
• Process and analyze massive user behavior data and catalog logs using distributed systems to construct real-time and offline features.
• Optimize online inference latency and system throughput for high-QPS production microservices.
• Conduct continuous A/B testing, analyze online metrics, identify bottleneck areas, and iterate on models to drive business goals.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualification(s):

• Individuals who are completing or have recently completed a PhD's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Math, Statistics, or a related discipline.
• Solid background in Data Structures, Algorithms, Computer Systems, and Software Design.
• Strong theoretical understanding and practical knowledge of machine learning concepts.

Preferred Qualification(s)

• Experience in recommendation system, online advertising, information retrieval, natural language processing, machine learning, large-scale data mining, or related fields.
• Publications at KDD, NeurlPS, WWW, SIGIR, WSDM, ICML, IJCAI, AAAI, RECSYS and related conferences/journals, or experience in data mining/machine learning competitions such as Kaggle/KDD-cup etc.

Job Information

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $129960 - $246240 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.

• day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 401(k) savings plan with company match
• paid parental leave
• short-term and long-term disability coverage
• life insurance
• wellbeing benefits
• among others
• 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)

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:

• 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;
• Exercising sound judgment.

About USDS

TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC is dedicated to the safety and security of millions of Americans who create, discover, and connect with what they love on the apps we operate. The Joint Venture has been established in compliance with the Executive Order signed by President Trump on September 25, 2025. Our foundation is a comprehensive data privacy and cybersecurity program we operate under defined safeguards to protect national security and secure U.S. user data, apps and the algorithm. We safeguard the U.S. content ecosystem, holding decision‑making authority for trust and safety policies and moderation. USDS Joint Venture helps ensure Americans can continue to express their creativity, discover new hobbies and interests, and build thriving communities and businesses on a global scale.

On‑site presence across teams allows the company to operate with greater speed, alignment, and agility — especially in areas like real‑time decision‑making, team development, and integrated execution. As such, the company is shifting from a hybrid work model to a fully in‑person schedule up to 5 days a week.

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.

USDS Reasonable Accommodation

USDS 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/USDS-RA