Machine Learning Engineer Intern (E-Commerce Knowledge Graph) - 2027 Start (PhD)

TikTok; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 69,000 - 91,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

10 paid holidays per year

Paid sick time (56 hours or 40 hours)

Housing allowance (if not 100% remote)

Job summary

TikTok invites PhD students to join the Knowledge Graph team in Seattle as an internship. You will work on building and refining knowledge graphs for products, content, and brand attributes, while collaborating with the recommendation team.

The role blends hands-on research with real-world product impact and cross-team collaboration. The internship offers hands-on learning, community-building, and professional development events, with exposure to industry experts.

Qualifications

• Pursuing a PhD in CS/CE/SE or related field.
• Experience in ML/NLP, knowledge graphs, or related areas.
• Experience in CV, multimodal learning, or recognition fields.
• Familiar with DL frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow) and ML methods.
• Strong coding skills in Python/Java/C/C++, Spark; analytical mindset.

Responsibilities

• Craft intricate knowledge graphs covering product/content insights and category/brand/SPU development.
• Architect knowledge maps detailing buyer and product connections.

Skills

Python/Java/C++

PyTorch/TensorFlow

NLP/Knowledge Graph

Analytical thinking

Research in ML/Graphs

Strong problem-solving

Education

PhD in CS/CE/SE or related

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Spark

Hadoop

Hive

Flink

Job description

Location

Seattle

Employment Type

Intern

Job Code

A115665

Responsibilities

The Knowledge Graph team is responsible for the neural network of e-commerce, which includes tasks such as categorizing products, influencers, and merchants, mining product information, and providing this data to the recommendation team. Additionally, they manage operations related to product tags and category attributes. When we come across a product, they determine whether it belongs to the clothing or sports category, who thie product will be suitable for, etc. Furthermore, the team conducts competitive research, identifying top-performing items on the platform and analyzing why one similar product outperforms others. They are also involved in brand recognition. This team plays a pivotal role, in bridging various aspects of our business and maintaining close collaboration with other teams. We are looking for talented individuals to join us for an internship. PhD internships at Our Company provide students with the opportunity to actively contribute to our products and research, as well as to the organization's future plans and emerging technologies. Our dynamic internship experience blends hands‑on learning, enriching community‑building and professional development events, and collaboration with industry experts.

• Craft intricate knowledge graphs, encompassing areas like product/content insights and category/brand/SPU development
• Architect knowledge maps detailing buyer and product connections

Minimum Qualifications

• Currently pursuing a PhD in Software Development, Computer Science, Computer Engineering or a related discipline
• Experience in at least one of the technological areas: LLM, natural language generation, named entity recognition, machine translation, question answering, knowledge graph, information extraction, text mining and classification etc
• Computer vision, facial recognition, multimodal learning, object detection & tracking, image classification etc
• Machine learning, transfer learning, graph embedding, representative learning, large-scale optimization, recommendation, reinforcement learning, etc
• Strong coding skills in at least one of the following programming frameworks, e.g. Python, Java, C/C++, Spark etc; Familiar with at least one of the following deep learning frameworks, e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, Keras etc
• Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills

Preferred Qualifications

• Familiarity with deep learning frameworks like TensorFlow/PyTorch
• Coursework or projects related to text classification, text matching, sequence labeling, and knowledge graphs
• Knowledge of domain adaptation, text mining, and unsupervised/semi‑supervised methodologies
• Experience with machine learning and deep learning algorithms, and text representation methods
• Exposure to large‑scale text data processing or tools like Hadoop/Spark/Hive/Flink
• Work experience in e‑commerce or the Internet industry is preferred

For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates

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.

Job Information

The hourly rate range for this position in the selected city is $57- $57.

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.

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

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