Machine Learning Engineer Intern (Ads Signal & Measurement) - 2027 Summer

TikTok; San Jose (CA); Hybrid; USD 51,000 - 73,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Wellbeing benefits

10 paid holidays per year

Housing allowance

Job summary

TikTok is seeking a campus intern for the Signal & Measurement team to help build ML models that improve advertiser measurement at scale. You’ll work with mentorship from experts and own real projects from day one, gaining experience across ML and large-scale systems.

The role emphasizes experimentation, identity resolution, attribution design, and production-ready data pipelines to support ads ranking and optimization globally.

Qualifications

• Pursuing or recently completed degree in a technical field.
• Solid foundation in ML & statistics; causal inference a plus.
• Proficiency in Python/Go/Java/C/C++ and data structures.

Responsibilities

• Build and improve ML models for signal quality and data reliability.
• Contribute to Identity Graph with probabilistic matching and graph algorithms.
• Work on attribution models (MTA, modeled conversions) and experimentation infrastructure.
• Contribute to data-to-model feedback loop across ranking systems.

Skills

Python

Go

Java

C/C++

Data structures & algorithms

Machine learning

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree or above in CS/Statistics/Math/EE

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Spark

Job description

Responsibilities

The Signal & Measurement team at TikTok Ads owns the full stack of advertising effectiveness — from signal collection and identity resolution to attribution modeling and causal measurement. We build the systems and models that help advertisers worldwide understand and maximize the true business value of their ad spend on TikTok.

Our work sits at the intersection of large-scale machine learning and causal inference, applied at massive scale to answer the hardest question in advertising: "Did this ad actually work?" The team's scope covers four pillars: signal, attribution, identity, and measurement. These outputs directly power downstream ads ranking and delivery models, closing the loop from measurement back to optimization. As a new grad on the team, you will be paired with an experienced mentor, own real projects from day one, and grow across both machine learning and large-scale systems.

• Build and improve machine learning models for signal quality — anomaly detection, signal recovery, denoising, and correction — to ensure the reliability of advertiser conversion data at scale.
• Contribute to cross-platform identity resolution: improve the precision and coverage of our Identity Graph through probabilistic matching models and graph algorithms.
• Participate in attribution model design and implementation, including multi-touch attribution (MTA), modeled conversions, and incrementality measurement.
• Drive the downstream application of signal, identity, and attribution data in ranking models — improve conversion prediction and bidding/ranking quality by feeding higher-fidelity signals, resolved identities, and modeled conversions into ads ranking systems, and own the data-to-model feedback loop end to end.
• Help build large-scale experimentation infrastructure and data pipelines powering Conversion Lift, Brand Lift, Split Test, and cross-media measurement products.
• Explore LLM-powered signal intelligence — apply large language models to the semantic understanding of advertiser conversion data, enabling intelligent classification, quality assessment, and automated correction of event signals.
• Collaborate with Product, Data Science, and Infrastructure teams to turn algorithmic ideas into production systems serving advertisers globally.

Qualifications

• Currently pursuing a Bachelor's or above degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• Solid foundation in machine learning and statistics: comfortable with concepts such as hypothesis testing, regression, probabilistic models, and ideally causal inference.
• Strong programming skills in at least one of Python, Go, Java, or C/C++, with a solid grasp of data structures and algorithms.
• Hands-on ML experience through coursework, research, internships, or personal projects (e.g., training and evaluating models on real-world data).
• Strong communication skills and eagerness to learn in a fast-paced environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Internship, research, or project experience in one or more of: computational advertising, recommendation/search ranking, causal inference or A/B experimentation, entity resolution/graph learning, anomaly detection, or applied LLMs/NLP.
• Publications at ML/data mining venues (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, KDD, WWW) or strong performance in algorithm/ML competitions (e.g., ACM-ICPC, Kaggle).
• Experience with large-scale data processing frameworks (e.g., Spark, Flink) or ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow).
• Genuine curiosity about ads tech and how advertisers think about ROI and measurement.

Job Information

【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Hourly) - Campus Intern

The hourly rate range for this position in the selected city is $45- $45.

Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location.

• Interns have day one access to health insurance, life insurance, wellbeing benefits and more.
• Interns also receive 10 paid holidays per year and paid sick time (56 hours if hired in first half of year, 40 if hired in second half of year).
• Interns who are not working 100% remote may also be eligible for housing allowance.

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 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