Software Engineer Intern (TikTok Search Data Infra) - 2027 Fall

TikTok Inc.; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 28,000 - 48,000; Full time

Job summary

TikTok Inc. in San Jose is offering an internship with our Search Engineering Team, which builds and owns TikTok's search engine by combining information retrieval with modern ML from NLP, CV, and recommender systems.

Interns will gain hands-on experience by building and owning query/video pipelines, developing the feature engineering platform, and creating data pipelines at scale, while learning to optimize data quality and observability in production environments.

Qualifications

• Currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline.
• Strong programming skills in Java, C++, or Python.
• Production experience with data frameworks such as Spark, Flink, or Hive/Iceberg.

Responsibilities

• Build and own query/video pipelines - ingestion, enrichment, and streaming/batch index construction at billion-doc scale with near-real-time freshness.
• Develop the feature engineering platform: computation, backfill, storage, and serving, with strong online/offline consistency guarantees.
• Build streaming and batch sample pipelines that turn user actions and features into high-quality training data.
• Improve data quality, observability, and cost efficiency across PB-scale storage and compute.

Skills

Java

C++

Python

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Tools

Spark

Flink

Hive/Iceberg

Job description

Responsibilities

About the Team
Our Search Engineering Team builds and owns TikTok's search engine, combining information retrieval with modern machine learning from NLP, CV, and recommender systems. We embrace a culture of self-direction, intellectual curiosity, openness, and problem-solving.
The Data Infrastructure team owns the data layer: how billions of videos and articles are ingested and indexed, how features are computed and served, how petabytes of user actions and features become training data, and how long sequences are modeled. Every retrieval and ranking model in TikTok Search runs on data our systems produce.

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.
Candidates may apply to a maximum of two positions across Our Company and its affiliates globally. Applications will be considered in the order they are submitted.
Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, so we encourage you to apply early. Please clearly state your availability in your resume, including your start and end dates.
Candidates who pass resume screening will be invited to participate in Our Company's technical online assessment.

Responsibilities

• Build and own query/video pipelines - ingestion, enrichment, and streaming/batch index construction at billion-doc scale with near-real-time freshness.
• Develop the feature engineering platform: computation, backfill, storage, and serving, with strong online/offline consistency guarantees.
• Build streaming and batch sample pipelines that turn user actions and features into high-quality training data.
• Improve data quality, observability, and cost efficiency across PB-scale storage and compute.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualification(s)

• Currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline.
• Strong programming skills in Java, C++, or Python.
• Production experience with data frameworks such as Spark, Flink, or Hive/Iceberg.
• Solid distributed systems fundamentals, and the ability to debug and optimize complex systems in production.

Preferred Qualification(s)

• Currently pursuing a Master's degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline.
• Experience with search, recommendation, or ads data infrastructure.
• Experience with feature stores and training sample pipelines.
• Familiarity with real-time indexing, inverted index, or embedding/vector retrieval pipelines.
• Experience using AI coding assistants and agents to improve day-to-day development productivity.