Research Engineer, Agentic Video Editing - TikTok

TikTok Inc.; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 162,000 - 388,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

401(k) with company match

Paid parental leave

Disability coverage

Life insurance

Wellbeing benefits

Job summary

TikTok Inc. is seeking a Research Engineer for Agentic Video Editing in San Jose. You will build end-to-end agentic editing systems, spanning agent harness, back-end services, and evaluation pipelines, and own features from prototyping to production.

The role emphasizes developing the agent harness, backend services, evaluation loops, and collaborating with research and product teams to translate experiments into creator-facing editing experiences.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, AI, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong programming skills in Python and solid software engineering fundamentals.
• Foundational knowledge of machine learning and large language models.
• Hands-on experience building an LLM application, AI Agent, or multimodal AI project through coursework, research, internships, or personal projects.
• Ability to design experiments, analyze failures, and turn findings into working improvements.
• Interest in video creation and building useful tools for creators.

Responsibilities

• Build end-to-end agentic video editing systems, working across the agent harness, backend services, and evaluation pipelines.
• Own scoped features and improvements from prototyping through production.
• Develop and improve the agent harness, including planning, tool use, context management, and error recovery for multimodal editing workflows.
• Build reliable backend services for agent execution, session management, and media processing, and improve system latency, cost, and reliability.
• Develop evaluation and feedback loops, including LLM judges, benchmarks, and human review workflows, to measure editing quality, diagnose failures, and catch regressions.
• Propose new ideas and adapt advances from research and industry into practical experiments, using evaluation results and user feedback to continuously improve agent capabilities and video quality.
• Collaborate with research, engineering, and product partners to turn successful experiments into useful editing experiences for creators.

Skills

Python programming

Software engineering fundamentals

Machine learning basics

LLM application development

Experiment design

Video creation interest

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s in CS/AI/related field

Tools

FFmpeg

Multimodal AI tools

Job description

Research Engineer, Agentic Video Editing - TikTok

Location:

San Jose

Employment Type:

Regular

Job Code:

A176766

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Responsibilities

• Build end-to-end agentic video editing systems, working across the agent harness, backend services, and evaluation pipelines.
• Own scoped features and improvements from prototyping through production.
• Develop and improve the agent harness, including planning, tool use, context management, and error recovery for multimodal editing workflows.
• Build reliable backend services for agent execution, session management, and media processing, and improve system latency, cost, and reliability.
• Develop evaluation and feedback loops, including LLM judges, benchmarks, and human review workflows, to measure editing quality, diagnose failures, and catch regressions.
• Propose new ideas and adapt advances from research and industry into practical experiments, using evaluation results and user feedback to continuously improve agent capabilities and video quality.
• Collaborate with research, engineering, and product partners to turn successful experiments into useful editing experiences for creators.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, AI, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong programming skills in Python and solid software engineering fundamentals.
• Foundational knowledge of machine learning and large language models.
• Hands‑on experience building an LLM application, AI Agent, or multimodal AI project through coursework, research, internships, or personal projects.
• Ability to design experiments, analyze failures, and turn findings into working improvements.
• Interest in video creation and building useful tools for creators.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with tool‑use agents, context management, or debugging and improving multi‑step agent workflows.
• Familiarity with video understanding, audio and visual processing.
• Experience with evaluation datasets, human annotation, or model‑based evaluation.
• Familiarity with video editing tools or media processing libraries such as FFmpeg.
• Relevant research, open‑source contributions, or projects that demonstrate the ability to build and evaluate AI systems.

Job Information

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $162000 - $387600 annually.

Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units.

Benefits

• Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others.
• Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure).

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

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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