Machine Learning Engineer Intern (Risk & Integrity) - 2027 Summer

TikTok USDS Joint Venture; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 51,000 - 73,000; Part time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Housing allowance

Paid holidays

Paid sick time

Job summary

TikTok USDS Joint Venture is seeking interns for the PaCI team to gain hands‑on experience solving large-scale integrity challenges with ML and AI. You will work with data, logs, and experiments to improve search behavior and product quality while collaborating across engineering, product, data science, and ML teams.

The internship expects a 12‑week Summer 2027 commitment, with on‑site work in the US. Consideration for housing allowances and comprehensive benefits is noted, along with guidance

Qualifications

• Pursuing a Bachelor's degree in a technical field with a Summer 2027 internship availability.
• Solid foundation in ML with experience applying Transformer and GNN architectures.
• Strong coding skills in Python, C++, or Go; familiar with distributed computing and PyTorch.

Responsibilities

• Work with large-scale data to understand user search behavior and improve product quality.
• Collaborate with engineering, product, data science, and ML teams to define requirements and milestones.
• Write clear code and documentation for assigned workstreams.
• Communicate progress, risks, and learnings with mentors and stakeholders.

Skills

Machine Learning

Transformer / GNN

Programming: Python

Distributed computing

PyTorch

Education

Bachelor's degree (CS/CE/SE)

Master's degree (CS/CE/SE)

Tools

Spark

Flink

PyTorch

Job description

The USDS Platform and Community Integrity (PaCI) team is the architectural backbone of TikTok's Risk & Integrity in the US. We drive end-to-end integrity for TikTok and its expanding ecosystem, including Lemon8 and emerging affiliate platforms, by leveraging localized US data and state-of-the-art AI/LLM capabilities.

We are looking for talented individuals to join us for an internship. Our internship program offers students hands‑on experience, industry exposure, and opportunities to apply their knowledge to real‑world challenges while building a strong foundation for personal and professional growth.

Interns will gain practical experience, explore potential career paths, and participate in social events, learning programs, and development workshops alongside industry professionals.

Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, so we encourage you to apply early. Please clearly state your availability in your resume, including your start and end dates.

Responsibilities:

• Work with large-scale data, logs, metrics, or experiments to understand user search behavior and improve product or system quality.
• Collaborate with engineering, product, data science, and machine learning partners to define requirements and deliver project milestones.
• Write clear, maintainable code and documentation for assigned workstreams.
• Communicate progress, risks, and learnings with mentors and stakeholders throughout the internship.

Qualifications

• Currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, or a related technical field.
• Able to commit to a 12‑week internship during Summer 2027.
• Solid foundation in Machine Learning; proficient in applying Transformer and GNN architectures to solve large-scale integrity challenges with social graph and behavior sequence data. Experience designing model evaluation systems that balance technical performance with product goals.
• Strong engineering and coding skills. Proficient in at least one language among Python, C++, or Go; familiar with distributed computing (e.g., Spark, Flink) and deep learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch).

Preferred Qualifications:

• Currently pursuing an Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• Agentic AI Experience: Hands‑on experience building LLM‑based Agents capable of task planning, tool‑use, or closed‑loop autonomous decision‑making.
• LLM Security & Alignment: Experience in LLM Post‑training or Fine‑tuning (e.g., SFT, RLVR, RLHF) to optimize models for specific risk domains like fraud intent recognition or malicious redirection.
• Multimodal Expertise: Proven track record in video understanding or multimodal representation; ability to integrate visual, audio, and textual features to solve complex behavioral modeling challenges.

Job Information

About USDS

TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC is dedicated to the safety and security of millions of Americans who create, discover, and connect with what they love on the apps we operate. The Joint Venture has been established in compliance with the Executive Order signed by President Trump on September 25, 2025. Our foundation is a comprehensive data privacy and cybersecurity program we operate under defined safeguards to protect national security and secure U.S. user data, apps and the algorithm. We safeguard the U.S. content ecosystem, holding decision‑making authority for trust and safety policies and moderation. USDS Joint Venture helps ensure Americans can continue to express their creativity, discover new hobbies and interests, and build thriving communities and businesses on a global scale.

On‑site presence across teams allows the company to operate with greater speed, alignment, and agility — especially in areas like real‑time decision‑making, team development, and integrated execution. As such, the company is shifting from a hybrid work model to a fully in‑person schedule up to 5 days a week.

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.

USDS Reasonable Accommodation

USDS 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/USDS-RA

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

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:

• 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