Machine Learning Engineer Graduate - (TikTok Trust and Safety - CV/NLP/Multimodal LLM) - 2026 Start(PHD)

TikTok Inc.; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 154,000 - 301,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision insurance

401(k) with company match

Paid parental leave

Short-term and long-term disability

Life insurance

Wellbeing benefits

10 paid holidays per year

10 paid sick days per year

17 days Paid Personal Time

Job summary

TikTok in Seattle is seeking graduates to join the algorithm team to advance state-of-the-art computer vision, NLP and multimodal models, protecting our platform and users. You will tackle bold ideas and grow professionally as you work on distributed training and content understanding.

Successful candidates must commit to onboarding by end of 2026; you will collaborate across product, engineering and data science to deploy models and build scalable serving pipelines.

Qualifications

• Ph.D in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Operation Research, Applied Mathematics or similar quantitative fields.
• Hands-on or academic experience in ML, Large Language Models, Recommendation Systems, and related areas.
• Strong coding skills.
• Curiosity towards new technologies and entrepreneurship, good communication and teamwork skills.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with product teams to define business objectives and improve trust and safety strategy.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to deploy machine learning models, design online model workflow, and implement serving pipelines at scale.
• Collaborate with the data scientist team to understand the key challenges and propose data-driven strategies.
• Work on state-of-the-art content understanding techniques including but not limited to unimodal/multimodal content classifiers, Active learning models, Reinforcement learning models, and Large Language Models.

Skills

Machine Learning

Large Language Models

Recommendation Systems

Strong coding skills

Curiosity to new tech

Communication & teamwork

Education

PhD in CS/EE/OR/Math or similar

Job description

Responsibilities

The algorithm team is responsible for developing state-of-the-art computer vision, NLP and multimodality models and algorithms to protect our platform and users from the content and behaviors that violate community guidelines and related regulations. With the continuous efforts from our team, TikTok is able to provide the best user experience and bring joy to everyone in the world.

We are looking for talented individuals to join our team in 2026. As a graduate, you will get opportunities to pursue bold ideas, tackle complex challenges, and unlock limitless growth. Launch your career where inspiration is infinite at our Company.

Successful candidates must be able to commit to an onboarding date by end of year 2026. Please state your availability and graduation date clearly in your resume.

In our team, you will have the opportunity to participate in the development of the cutting-edge content understanding model to help improve the recognition ability of violated content in TikTok, and will also be responsible for optimizing our distributed model training framework continuously.

1. Collaborate with product teams to define business objectives and improve trust and safety strategy.
2. Collaborate with engineering teams to deploy machine learning models, design online model workflow, and implement serving pipelines at scale.
3. Collaborate with the data scientist team to understand the key challenges and propose data-driven strategies.
4. Work on state-of-the-art content understanding techniques including but not limited to unimodal/multimodal content classifiers, Active learning models, Reinforcement learning models, and Large Language Models.

Candidates can apply for a maximum of TWO positions and will be considered for jobs in the order you applied for. The application limit is applicable to TikTok and its affiliates' jobs globally.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

1. Ph.D in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Operation Research, Applied Mathematics or similar quantitative fields.
2. Hands-on or academic experience in one or more of the following areas: Machine learning, Large Language Models, Recommendation Systems, and related areas.
3. Strong coding skills.
4. Curiosity towards new technologies and entrepreneurship, good communication and teamwork skills.

By submitting an application for this role, you accept and agree to our global applicant privacy policy, which may be accessed here: https://careers.tiktok.com/legal/privacy.

Job Information

[For Pay Transparency] Compensation Description (annually)

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $153900 - $300960 annually.

Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on 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.

• 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.