Machine Learning Engineer Intern (E-Commerce Recommendation Mall) - 2027 Start (PhD)

TikTok; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 65,000 - 92,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Life insurance

Wellbeing benefits

Housing allowance

Job summary

TikTok is offering a PhD internship on our E-commerce Recommendation Team in Seattle. You will contribute to cutting-edge research on generative recommender systems, LLM-driven improvements, and agentic architectures to optimize user experience and long-term value.

Ideal candidates are pursuing a PhD with deep learning experience in LLMs, RL, and recommender systems, proficient in Python and major DL frameworks, and eager to tackle real-world, scalable research challenges in a fast-moving tech

Qualifications

• Currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics or a related discipline.
• Solid foundation in machine learning and deep learning with research or project experience in LLMs, RL, generative models, recommender systems or information retrieval.
• Proficient in Python and at least one mainstream deep learning framework (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX).

Responsibilities

• Generative Recommendation Research: evolve recommender systems toward generative Paradigms; explore generative retrieval and re-ranking; optimize training and inference on GPUs.
• LLM for Recommendation Research: leverage LLMs, RL, and related techniques to enhance semantic understanding in recommender systems for e-commerce challenges.
• Agentic Recommendation Research: build self-evolving agents to continuously optimize recommender systems and enable real-time, personalized decisions.
• Long-Term Value and User Experience Modeling: develop algorithms to measure and optimize LTV and user experience for sustainable growth.

Skills

Python

PyTorch

TensorFlow

JAX

Education

PhD in Computer Science

Tools

GPUs

Job description

Responsibilities

Our E-commerce Recommendation Team is responsible for building up and scaling our recommendation system to provide the best shopping experience for our TikTok users.

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.

• Generative Recommendation Research: Drive the evolution of recommender systems from discriminative to generative paradigms; explore frontier directions such as generative retrieval and generative re-ranking/blending; continuously improve personalization capabilities while deeply optimizing the training and inference efficiency of generative models on GPUs.
• LLM for Recommendation Research: Leverage Large Language Models (LLMs), Reinforcement Learning (RL), and related techniques to enhance the semantic understanding and reasoning capabilities of recommender systems, addressing core business challenges in e-commerce scenarios (e.g., cold start, long-tail item distribution, and user intent understanding).
• Agentic Recommendation Research: Explore the construction of self‑evolving agents and leverage agents to continuously optimize recommender systems; drive the evolution of recommender systems toward agentic architectures capable of keenly perceiving user context and making real‑time, personalized decisions and adjustments.
• Long-Term Value and User Experience Modeling: Explore replacing traditional heuristic rule‑based systems with LLM and agent capabilities; build next‑generation algorithms for measuring and optimizing long‑term value (LTV) and user experience, enabling sustainable growth of the platform ecosystem.

Qualifications

• Currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics or a related discipline.
• Solid foundation in machine learning and deep learning, with research or project experience in at least one of the following areas: large language models, reinforcement learning, generative models, recommender systems or information retrieval.
• Proficient in Python and at least one mainstream deep learning framework (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX).

Strong problem‑solving skills and passion for tackling complex, open‑ended research problems.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in recommendation systems, especially in live commerce, e‑commerce, search, ads, or other large‑scale consumer products.
• Experience with generative recommendation, large recommendation models, retrieval and ranking systems, or related recommendation architecture upgrades.
• Experience with LLMs or multimodal foundation models, including pre‑training, post‑training, representation learning, contrastive learning, SFT, or RL‑based optimization.
• Experience in cross‑domain transfer learning, LTV modeling, long‑term value optimization, causal inference, or debiasing.
• Experience with long‑sequence user behavior modeling, multi‑task learning, multi‑interest modeling, or large‑scale distributed training and inference optimization.
• Publications in top‑tier conferences such as NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, KDD, ACL, CVPR, SIGIR, or RecSys, or strong achievements in major technical competitions.
• Strong curiosity about new technologies, fast learning ability, and a passion for solving challenging real‑world problems.

Job Information

For Pay Transparency: Compensation Description (Hourly) - Campus Intern

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.

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