Research Engineer/Scientist (all levels), World Models

TikTok; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 156,000 - 388,000; Full time

Job summary

TikTok is seeking Research Engineer / Scientist for the Vision-Applied Research team to advance generative AI and CV/multimodal understanding. You will help build next-generation World Models and scale infrastructure for training on massive multimodal datasets.

The role emphasizes long-horizon video generation, realistic physics, complex dynamics, and real-time user interactions with models, with collaboration across research groups for impactful breakthroughs.

Qualifications

• MS or PhD in Computer Vision, Computer Graphics, Machine Learning, or equivalent experience.
• Extensive research experiences in broad GenAI, multimodal foundation models, or Embodied AI areas.
• Demonstrated ability to communicate complex technical concepts and collaborate effectively within cross-functional research teams

Responsibilities

• Develop large-scale, diverse, and interactive multi-modal data generation pipeline.
• Develop training pipeline for long-context interactive video generation models.
• Advance video generation models to capture long-horizon temporal consistency, realistic physical dynamics, object interactions, and causal relationships from large-scale multi-modal data.

Skills

GenAI research

Multimodal models

Communication

Education

MS or PhD in Computer Vision / ML

Job description

Responsibilities

About the Team

The Vision-Applied Research team focuses on applied research in Generative AI and CV/Multimodal Understanding, and delivering intelligent solutions to Tiktok, enabling users to make and share creative content in a much easier way. The team has research groups dedicated to generative models for content creation, image generation, video synthesis, intelligent image/video editing, and world models.

The team is looking for Research Engineer / Scientists who can take initiatives in building next-generation World Models. The candidate will work on developing methods and infrastructure to train large-scale generative models from massive simulated and real-world multimodal datasets. This role places a particular emphasis on ensuring long-horizon temporal consistency, realistic physics, complex dynamics from the model and enabling users and agents to interact with the model in real-time.

Responsibilities

• Develop large-scale, diverse, and interactive multi-modal data generation pipeline.
• Develop training pipeline for long-context interactive video generation models.
• Advance video generation models to capture long-horizon temporal consistency, realistic physical dynamics, object interactions, and causal relationships from large-scale multi-modal data.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• M.S or Ph.D. in Computer Vision, Computer Graphics, Machine Learning, or equivalent experience.
• Extensive research experiences in broad GenAI, multimodal foundation models, or Embodied AI areas.
• Demonstrated ability to communicate complex technical concepts and collaborate effectively within cross-functional research teams

Preferred Qualifications:

• Proven experiences in at least one of the following areas: video generation and synthesis; efficient and real-time diffusion models; 3D/physics-based simulation; or reinforcement learning for agentic environment interaction.
• Proven track record of first-author publications in prestigious venues including CVPR, ICLR, NeurIPS, SIGGRAPH, and ICML

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 are 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

Job Information

【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Annually)

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $156000 - $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 may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location.

• 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:

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.