Software Engineer Graduate (Data Arch - AI/ML Infrastructure) - 2026 Start (PhD)

TikTok Inc.; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 162,000 - 317,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

401(k) match

Parental leave

Disability insurance

Life insurance

Wellbeing benefits

Holidays and paid leave

Job summary

TikTok Inc. is seeking graduates to join our Recommendation Architecture Team in 2026, building and optimizing the architecture for our recommendation products to deliver the best user experience.

You will contribute to high-performance services, scalable data pipelines, and global systems as part of a fast-growing, innovation-driven team. As a graduate, you will have opportunities to pursue bold ideas, kickstart your career, and explore limitless growth with TikTok.

Qualifications

• PhD in Computer Science, ML, AI, or related field (expected by 2026).
• Research background in ML/AI focusing on inference optimization or efficient ML systems.
• Proficient in C, C++, Java or Python.
• Strong problem-solving, self-driven learning, and communication skills.
• Preferred: translating research into practical system implementations.
• Experience in recommendation systems, search, distributed systems, or big data processing.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain high-performance services for TikTok's recommendation system.
• Create efficient data pipelines for candidate and profile generation.
• Develop globalized, large-scale recommendation systems.
• Design high-performance computing frameworks and storage systems.

Skills

PhD in CS/ML/AI

ML/AI research

Programming: C/C++, Java, Python

Problem solving & communication

Education

PhD in CS/ML/AI

Job description

Responsibilities

Our Recommendation Architecture Team is responsible for building up and optimizing the architecture for our recommendation products to provide the most stable and best experience for our TikTok users. University graduates are important parts to our team with your fresh ideas and creative thoughts.

We are looking for talented individuals to join our team in 2026. As a graduate, you will get unparalleled opportunities for you to kickstart your career, pursue bold ideas and explore limitless growth opportunities. Co-create a future driven by your inspiration with TikTok.

Successful candidates must be able to commit to an onboarding date by end of year 2026.

We will prioritize candidates who are able to commit to these start dates. Please state your availability and graduation date clearly in your resume.

What You'll Do

• Build and maintain high performance online services for TikTok recommendation system to support various types of products, such as For You Feed, E-commerce, Social, etc.
• Build extremely efficient and reliable data pipelines for candidates generation, profile generation, training examples generation, realtime online training, etc;
• Build globalized large-scale recommendation system;
• Design and develop high performance computing frameworks and storage systems.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• PhD's degree (or expected by 2026) in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, or related fields.
• Research background in ML/AI, with a focus on inference optimization, model acceleration, or efficient ML systems.
• Experience in programming, included but not limited to, the following programming languages: C, C++, Java or Python.
• Problem-solving skills, self-driven learning mindset, and effective communication.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Demonstrated ability to translate research into practical system implementations.
• Experience (academic or practical) in areas such as recommendation systems, search, distributed systems, or big data processing.

Job Information

[For Pay Transparency] Compensation Description (annually)

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $162000 - $316800 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.