Machine Learning Engineer Intern (E-Commerce User Growth) - 2027 Start (PhD) San Jose PhD Intern - 2027 Start

TikTok; San Jose, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 70,000 - 95,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Paid holidays

Housing allowance

Job summary

TikTok is seeking a Machine Learning Engineer Intern (PhD) to advance e-commerce user growth in our San Jose office. You will help optimize growth and marketing algorithms, including user value modeling, personalized messaging, and recommendations to boost engagement and GMV.

This internship is aimed at PhD students who want frontier ML methods into production, collaborating with a diverse team. Start in 2027, with hands-on projects, mentorship, and opportunities to publish results and influence

Qualifications

• Pursuing a PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics or a related field.
• Strong ML fundamentals; clean, efficient, reproducible code and solid data structures.
• Experience in at least one of LLMs/foundation models, NLP, CV, RL, or recommendation/search/ads.
• Interest in deploying frontier ML methods to production and clear problem decomposition.

Responsibilities

• Optimize e-commerce growth and marketing algorithms (value modeling, personalization, recommendations).
• Establish a user lifecycle data/value system for TikTok Mall growth.
• Contribute to product/technical solutions for growth engines (notifications, recommendations) to raise DAU and penetration.
• Improve recall/sort for new user recommendations to boost relevance and diversity.
• Enhance marketing efficiency using uplift models and operations research for GMV growth.

Skills

ML fundamentals

Programming

Deep learning

LLMs / foundation models

NLP

CV

RL

Recommendation / search / ads

Education

PhD pursuit in CS/EE/Math/Stats

Tools

Python

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Job description

Machine Learning Engineer Intern (E-Commerce User Growth) - 2027 Start (PhD)

Location:

San Jose

Employment Type:

Intern

Job Code:

A14260

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The TikTok E-commerce Recommendation and Marketing Algorithm team is responsible for algorithm and big data work on e-commerce innovation projects. Leveraging on our products, the team helps users discover and acquire great products, enriching their lives. In this team, we not only use recommendation and search algorithms to help users find items they are interested in but also employ risk control algorithms and intelligent platform governance algorithms to detect violations, ensuring a secure shopping experience. We build intelligent customer service technologies and large-scale product knowledge graphs to improve the efficiency of various transaction processes. Furthermore, we develop logistics and operations research algorithms to enhance supply chain efficiency, and we apply artificial intelligence to help merchants improve their operational capabilities. Our mission: To make high-quality products easily accessible, enabling everyone to enjoy a better life.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

• Participate in optimizing TikTok e-commerce growth and marketing algorithms, including core capabilities such as user value modelling, personalized messaging, recommendations, and intelligent marketing.
• Establish a user lifecycle data and value system to address core pain points and business challenges related to TikTok Mall user growth.
• Contribute to the implementation of product and technical solutions for user growth engines, such as personalized push notifications/emails, recommendation handling, etc., to increase e-commerce DAU and penetration rates.
• Optimize algorithms related to recall/sorting for new user recommendations, improving the relevance of traffic source handling and the accuracy and diversity of new user recommendations.
• Optimize intelligent marketing algorithms, utilizing uplift models and operations research methods to improve marketing efficiency and drive e-commerce GMV growth.

Minimum Qualifications

• Currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics or a related discipline.
• Solid ML and engineering fundamentals: you understand the math behind the models, and you write clean, efficient, reproducible code with a strong command of algorithms and data structures.
• Deep research or engineering practice in at least one of: LLMs / foundation models, NLP, CV, RL, or recommendation / search / ads — and you can articulate why you made the choices you made, and where they fell short.
• Genuine enthusiasm for LLM / LRM techniques: you want frontier methods live in production, not parked at offline metrics.
• Strong problem definition and decomposition: faced with an ambiguous problem that has no standard answer, you find your own foothold.

Preferred Qualifications

• Candidates who have published papers in top AI conferences/journals or achieved notable results in ACM/Machine Learning competitions.
• Experience in recommendation systems, advertising, user growth, intelligent marketing, or related fields, with expertise in LTV estimation, uplift modelling, operations research, sequence modelling, or multi-scenario modelling optimization is a plus.

Job Information

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

Benefits

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:

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.

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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