Machine Learning Engineer Intern (E-Commerce Recommendation/Search Alliance) - 2027 Start (PhD)

TikTok; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 68,000 - 97,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Housing allowance

Paid holidays

Job summary

TikTok is seeking a PhD intern to contribute to large-scale e-commerce AI systems. You will design and implement ML-driven recommendations and merchant tools, working with cross-functional teams to bring research to production.

This internship offers hands-on learning, collaboration with industry experts, and exposure to cutting-edge AI, ML, NLP, and multimodal technologies used to enhance discovery and monetization on the TikTok Shop ecosystem.

Qualifications

• Currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, Operations Research or a related technical discipline.
• Strong grasp of data structures, algorithms, and problem solving.
• Profound knowledge in machine learning, statistics, and big data engineering.

Responsibilities

• Design and build ML, recommendation, and ranking algorithms for large-scale real-time product suggestions.
• Develop AI-powered merchant operation systems and AI agents to optimize affiliate strategies and ROI.
• Apply LLMs, NLP, and multimodal ML to uncover new business opportunities and growth.
• Collaborate with PMs, engineers, and cross-functional teams to move AI ideas from research to production.
• Stay at the forefront of AI advances, prototyping and productionizing new tech for intelligent commerce.
• Build ML agents to automate algorithm development, accelerating experimentation and deployment.

Skills

PhD candidate in CS/related

Data structures & algorithms

Machine learning & statistics

Big data engineering

Education

PhD student in Computer Science or related field

Job description

Responsibilities

The E-commerce Alliance team connects merchants and creators across the TikTok Shop ecosystem. We help merchants achieve their business goals by building intelligent and automated affiliate operation tools, while providing creators with efficient and highly personalized product recommendations that make it easier to discover the right products and create high-quality content.

Responsibilities

The E-commerce Alliance team connects merchants and creators across the TikTok Shop ecosystem. We help merchants achieve their business goals by building intelligent and automated affiliate operation tools, while providing creators with efficient and highly personalized product recommendations that make it easier to discover the right products and create high-quality content. By improving merchant–creator matching, recommendation, search, and end-to-end collaboration efficiency, we aim to expand merchants’ marketing opportunities, increase creators’ monetization potential, and deliver a more engaging and personalized shopping experience to TikTok users. Our team works on large-scale recommendation and search systems, intelligent affiliate operations, creator and product understanding, and machine learning solutions that impact commerce growth. 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.

Responsibilities:

• Design and build cutting-edge machine learning, recommendation, and ranking algorithms to power large-scale e-commerce recommendation systems that deliver high-quality, real-time product recommendations for millions of users.
• Develop AI-powered merchant operation systems and AI agents that help merchants optimize affiliate strategies, improve business ROI, and lower the barrier to growing their business through automation.
• Apply state-of-the-art LLMs , NLP, and multimodal machine learning to discover new business opportunities , driving sustainable growth for both merchants and creators.
• Collaborate closely with product managers, engineers, and cross-functional teams to bring innovative AI solutions from research to production.
• Stay at the forefront of advances in AI and machine learning, rapidly prototyping and productionizing new technologies to shape the future of intelligent commerce.
• Build ML-agents to automate algorithm development workflows, accelerating experimentation, model iteration, evaluation, and deployment.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• Currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, Operations Research or a related technical discipline.
• Strong grasp of data structures, algorithms, and top‑notch problem‑solving skills;
• Profound knowledge in machine learning, statistics, and big data engineering.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Thorough understanding of data structures and algorithms, with excellent problem-solving ability;
• Deep Understanding of machine learning, statistics, scaling distributed computing, and big data engineering.

Job Information

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

The hourly rate range for this position in the selected city is $60- $60.

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