Senior Software Engineer, Machine Learning (LLM & Agentic AI - TikTok - Content Ecology Local S[...]

TikTok; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 218,000 - 480,000; Full time

Job summary

TikTok is seeking a Senior Software Engineer, Machine Learning (LLM & Agentic AI - TikTok Local Services) in San Jose to drive research and development of core algorithms for local services, leveraging LLMs/MLLMs, NLP, and multimodal data to improve transaction conversion.

You will build semantic representations, knowledge graphs, and scalable production solutions, collaborating across teams to translate advances into impactful, customer-facing features.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or above in Computer Science, AI, Software Engineering, or related technical field.
• Strong foundations in ML/DL with Transformer architectures and multimodal LLMs.
• Experience in NLP, CV, multimodal understanding, AI agents, knowledge graphs, or recommendation.
• Hands-on Python, PyTorch, distributed model training, and production deployment.

Responsibilities

• Drive research and development of core algorithms for TikTok Local Services, leveraging LLMs/MLLMs, Agentic AI, NLP, CV, multimodal learning, and optimization.
• Develop deep semantic representations and structured models of content, products, and user intent; build knowledge graphs and end-to-end transactional optimization.
• Enhance supply- and demand-side experiences to drive growth in transaction conversion.
• Tackle multilingual and multimodal challenges in dynamic environments and long-horizon decision-making.
• Translate research advances into production-grade solutions and establish reusable foundations.

Skills

Machine Learning

Deep Learning

Transformer architectures

NLP

Multimodal understanding

Algorithm research

Cross-functional collaboration

Production deployment

Education

Bachelor's degree or above in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Python

PyTorch

Distributed training

Data processing

Job description

Senior Software Engineer, Machine Learning (LLM & Agentic AI - TikTok - Content Ecology Local Services)

Location:

San Jose

Employment Type:

Regular

Job Code:

A31632

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About the Team

The Content Ecology Algorithm Team drives TikTok's AI innovations in LLMs/MLLMs, NLP, Computer Vision, Multimodal learning, Agentic AI, and recommendation algorithms. We develop cutting-edge AI capabilities that power multiple business lines.You will tackle unique algorithm challenges in building products for a global audience. Our platform's diverse content and worldwide user base create a wealth of opportunities for AI applications. With rapidly growing businesses such as TikTok Local Services, you'll have the chance to bring cutting-edge AI innovations into real-world production.

Responsibilities

• - Drive the research and development of core algorithms for TikTok Local Services, leveraging LLMs/MLLMs, Agentic AI, NLP, Computer Vision, conversion modeling, global optimization, and causal uplift modeling.
• - Develop deep semantic representations and structured models of content, products, and user intent, while building foundational capabilities across product knowledge graphs, intent understanding, and end-to-end intelligent transaction optimization.
• - Continuously enhance both supply- and demand-side experiences to drive sustainable growth in transaction conversion.
• - Tackle frontier technical challenges unique to local services, including multilingual and multimodal understanding, highly dynamic environments, and long-horizon sequential decision-making.
• - Stay at the forefront of research, translate state-of-the-art advances into production-grade solutions, scale proven innovations, and establish reusable algorithmic foundations with broad applicability.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• - Bachelor's degree or above in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Software Engineering or a related technical field.
• - Strong foundations in machine learning and deep learning, with a solid understanding of Transformer architectures, LLMs, multimodal large language models, and modern representation learning techniques.
• - Experience in one or more relevant areas, such as NLP, computer vision, multimodal understanding, AI agents, knowledge graphs, retrieval and recommendation, conversion modeling, causal uplift modeling, or decision optimization.
• - Hands-on experience with Python, PyTorch, distributed model training, and large-scale data processing, with strong algorithmic, software engineering, and production deployment capabilities.
• - Proven ability to formulate and solve complex, ambiguous problems, translate research advances into scalable production solutions, and deliver measurable business impact.
• - Strong cross-functional collaboration and communication skills, with a track record of driving technically complex projects to high-quality execution.

Preferred Qualifications

• - Experience building large-scale machine learning systems for e-commerce, recommendation, search, advertising, marketplaces or other transaction-oriented products.
• - Experience working with multilingual, multimodal, or highly dynamic data and deploying models in large-scale production environments.
• - Publications at leading conferences, such as NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ACL, EMNLP, NAACL, KDD, WWW, SIGIR, RecSys, AAAI, Interspeech, or ICASSP.
• - Demonstrated technical leadership through driving cross-functional initiatives, establishing reusable algorithmic capabilities, or mentoring engineers and researchers.

Job Information

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $218400 - $480000 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.

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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