Research Engineer Intern (Monetization Technology - Business Integrity) - 2027 Summer

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

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance from day one

Paid holidays

Housing allowance

Job summary

TikTok is seeking a campus intern in the US to contribute to a next-generation content understanding system for monetization. You will work on building scalable machine learning models for moderation, with cross-disciplinary collaboration across global teams and a focus on delivering high-quality user experiences and advertiser value.

The role emphasizes practical ML work, exposure to state-of-the-art techniques, and participation in industry workshops.

Qualifications

• Pursuing a Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Automation, Mathematics, Statistics, or a related technical discipline (completed or within 12 months). Exceptional Bachelor’s candidates will be considered.
• Hands-on experience implementing, training, or deploying models in Ads, Search, Recommender Systems, NLP, CV, Multimodal, or Agent technologies.
• Familiarity with large language models (pre-training, fine-tuning, prompting, inference, deployment) in at least one stage.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals: clean, testable code, version control, end-to-end debugging.
• Proficient in Python and at least one DL framework such as PyTorch or TensorFlow.

Responsibilities

• Build a leading moderation system enabling end-to-end capabilities for accurate rejection decisions, interpretable reasoning, and intelligent remediation.
• Support internship program with hands-on projects, industry exposure, and real-world challenges to foster growth.

Skills

Machine Learning

Python programming

Collaboration

Problem solving

English communication

Education

Master's in CS/EE/Math/Statistics

Bachelor's degree (exceptional)

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Deep learning frameworks

NLP/CV knowledge

Job description

Responsibilities

Our Business Integrity team has a strong user focus and a dedication to technical excellence. We aim to meet our users' needs with reliable and high-performing platforms and services. We are looking for strong machine learning engineers who are excited to grow their business understanding, build highly scalable machine learning models, and partner across disciplines with global teams, in pursuit of excellence. Given the fast growth of TikTok in the world, we are working on building a next-generation content understanding system for TikTok monetization. We are seeking Research Engineers who are experienced in machine learning, which can help us create an ecosystem that rewards high-quality user experience and advertiser value.

Our Business Integrity team has a strong user focus and a dedication to technical excellence. We aim to meet our users' needs with reliable and high-performing platforms and services. We are looking for strong machine learning engineers who are excited to grow their business understanding, build highly scalable machine learning models, and partner across disciplines with global teams, in pursuit of excellence. Given the fast growth of TikTok in the world, we are working on building a next-generation content understanding system for TikTok monetization. We are seeking Research Engineers who are experienced in machine learning, which can help us create an ecosystem that rewards high-quality user experience and advertiser value.

In this role, you will build a leading moderation system that enables end-to-end capabilities for accurate rejection decisions, interpretable reasoning, and intelligent remediation, achieving fully automated moderation with performance surpassing human benchmarks.

Internship Program

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.

Qualifications

• Currently pursuing a Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Automation, Mathematics, Statistics, or a related technical discipline (completed, or expecting to graduate within 12 months). Exceptional Bachelor's candidates with strong research output will also be considered.


• Hands-on experience implementing, training, or deploying models in one or more of the following areas — Ads, Search, Recommender Systems, NLP, CV, Multimodal, or Agent technologies — through coursework, internships, or industry projects.


• Familiarity with the fundamentals of large language models (e.g. pre-training, fine-tuning, prompting, inference and deployment), with practical experience in at least one of these stages.


• Strong software engineering fundamentals: clean, testable code, version control, and the ability to debug complex systems end to end.


• Proficient in Python and at least one deep learning framework such as PyTorch or TensorFlow.

Strong problem-solving ability, a collaborative mindset, and a genuine interest in applying AI to real-world products.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with large-scale distributed training (DeepSpeed, Megatron, FSDP) or high-throughput inference (vLLM, SGLang, TensorRT-LLM).


• Experience with production model deployment, serving optimization, or latency/cost tuning.


• Experience building data pipelines for large-scale training or evaluation.


• Experience building agentic systems, RAG pipelines, or multimodal applications.


• Familiarity with the ads / search / recommendation industry stack.


• Open-source contributions, strong results in ML competitions (Kaggle, Tianchi, ACM/ICPC), or granted patents.

Job Information

• Compensation Description (Hourly) - Campus Intern


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

Benefits

• 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