ML Scientist Intern: Generative Recommendations for E‑Commerce

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

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance on day one

Life insurance

Wellbeing benefits

Paid holidays

Housing allowance (possible)

Job summary

TikTok is offering a PhD internship as a Machine Learning Scientist Intern (Global E-Commerce Content Recommendation) for Summer 2026 in Seattle. The role focuses on building and improving content recommendation models and driving product impact across livestreams, short videos, and search.

The internship emphasizes hands-on learning, industry collaboration, and opportunities to contribute to production systems, with strong emphasis on research output and scalable ML solutions.

Qualifications

• Currently pursuing a PhD with a background in computer science, machine learning, or similar fields.
• Good knowledge of theoretical and empirical research in addressing research problems.
• Solid knowledge and experience with at least one popular deep learning framework (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow) and familiarity with deep neural networks.

Responsibilities

• Build industry-leading recommendation system, improving user experience, content ecosystem and platform security;
• Explore generative recommendation techniques, including Diffusion Models, prompt learning, and multimodal content generation, to unlock new capabilities in content discovery;
• Build multi-model and cross-scenario systems enabling unified recommendation across livestreams, short videos, and search;
• Deliver end-to-end machine learning solution to address critical product challenges;
• Own the full stack machine learning system and optimize algorithms and infrastructure to improve recommendation performance;
• Work with cross functional teams to design product strategies and build solutions to grow TikTok in important markets.

Skills

PhD candidate in CS/ML

Deep learning

PyTorch/TensorFlow

Python

C/C++

Education

PhD in Computer Science

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Shell scripting

Job description

TikTok is offering a PhD internship as a Machine Learning Scientist Intern (Global E-Commerce Content Recommendation) for Summer 2026 in Seattle. The role focuses on building and improving content recommendation models and driving product impact across livestreams, short videos, and search.

The internship emphasizes hands-on learning, industry collaboration, and opportunities to contribute to production systems, with strong emphasis on research output and scalable ML solutions.