Research Scientist Intern (TikTok-Neural Graphics and World Models) - 2027 Start (PhD)

TikTok; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 70,000 - 95,000; Full time

Job summary

TikTok is seeking Research Scientist interns to tackle foundational problems in neural graphics and world models. You will own a scoped project within a research track, collaborating with engineers to connect models to data, runtime, and engine pipelines.

This internship targets candidates with strong research potential who enjoy turning ideas into working experiments, analyzing failures, and building useful prototypes. Start date Summer 2027; duration 12 weeks.

Qualifications

• Pursuing a PhD in a technical field with strong research experience.
• Hands-on experience with ML frameworks such as PyTorch or JAX.
• Strong foundation in machine learning, generative modeling, and experimental methodology.

Responsibilities

• Study relevant research, reproduce baselines, and identify extensions.
• Develop and evaluate models, data methods, or evaluation workflows in a scoped area.
• Build components of training, inference, data, or evaluation pipelines using ML frameworks.
• Run controlled experiments, analyze model behavior, and communicate findings.
• Create research prototypes for interactive graphics and engine workflows.
• Produce reproducible research artifacts and technical documentation.

Skills

PhD candidate

Research in ML

PyTorch or JAX

Generative modeling

3D/graphics experience

Education

PhD in relevant field

Tools

PyTorch

JAX

Job description

Responsibilities

About the Role

We are looking for Research Scientist interns to work on foundational problems in neural graphics and world models.

You will own a scoped project in one primary research focus track, such as model development, data strategy, evaluation, or interactive prototyping. You will work with other engineers to connect successful models and experiments to data, runtime, and engine pipelines.

This role is intended for candidates with strong research potential who enjoy turning ideas into working experiments, analyzing failures, and building useful prototypes.

We are looking for talented individuals to join us for an internship. PhD internships at Our Company provide students with the opportunity to actively contribute to our products and research, as well as to the organization’s future plans and emerging technologies.

Our dynamic internship experience blends hands‑on learning, enriching community‑building and professional development events, and collaboration with industry experts.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, so we encourage you to apply early. Please clearly state your availability in your resume (Start date, End date).

Responsibilities

• Study relevant research, reproduce strong baselines, and identify practical extensions.
• Develop and evaluate models, algorithms, data methods, or evaluation methods in a scoped research area.
• Build components of training, inference, data, or evaluation workflows using modern ML frameworks.
• Run controlled experiments, analyze model behavior, and communicate findings clearly.
• Create research prototypes for interactive graphics, creative tools, or engine‑based workflows.
• Produce reproducible research artifacts, clear documentation, demonstrations, and technical reports.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• Currently pursuing a PhD degree in a relevant technical field.
• Able to commit to working for 12 weeks during the Summer of 2027.
• Research experience through a laboratory, thesis, publication, internship, open‑source project, or substantial independent project. Strong, up‑to‑date foundation in machine learning, generative modeling, and experimental methodology, with hands‑on experience building, training, fine‑tuning, or evaluating models using frameworks such as PyTorch or JAX.
• Familiarity with modern generative architectures and training methods such as variational autoencoders, latent tokenizers, diffusion or flow‑matching models, diffusion transformers, autoregressive models, multimodal transformers, long‑context modeling, pre‑training, or post‑training.
• Engineering fluency with model development workflows and the ability to reason about model architecture, training dynamics, data quality, and evaluation results.
• Deep experience in at least one of the following AI‑for‑graphics areas: 3D modeling, asset generation, or 3D representations; animation or motion generation; simulation or physics‑aware learning; rendering or neural rendering; world models or video prediction; or graphics and game‑engine workflows.

Preferred Qualifications

• Peer‑reviewed publications at leading venues such as SIGGRAPH, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, RSS, CoRL, or related research communities.
• Strong technical reports, open‑source contributions, demos, project pages, or research projects that show technical depth, originality, and independent experimentation.
• Experience with 3D or world generation conditioned on text, images, video, actions, or structured scene inputs.
• Interest in collaborating with Software Engineers to move research prototypes into interactive engine pipelines.
• Ability to understand recent research, design controlled experiments, analyze failures, and contribute to model training, data, or evaluation workflows.

By submitting an application for this role, you accept and agree to our global applicant privacy policy, which may be accessed here: https://careers.tiktok.com/legal/privacy

As a condition of employment, all successful candidates must be able to establish authorization to work in the United States. For this position, the Company does not provide sponsorship or any immigration‑related benefits.

Job Information

【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Hourly) - Campus Intern

The hourly rate range for this position in the selected city is $60- $60.

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
• 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