Tech Lead Research Scientist - Recommendation Foundation Models (Global E-commerce)

TikTok; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 242,000 - 456,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) with company match

Paid parental leave

Short-term and long-term disability

Life insurance

Wellbeing benefits

Paid holidays

Paid sick days

Paid Personal Time

Job summary

TikTok is seeking a Tech Lead Research Scientist for the Recommendation Foundation Models team in Seattle. You will own foundation models from research to production and drive event-sequence-driven, multimodal recommendation systems at scale.

The role requires strong ML/LLM expertise, leadership across teams, and a track record of producing measurable online impact, with a focus on production deployment and efficiency.

Qualifications

• MS/PhD in CS or related field with research experience.
• Demonstrated impact with LLMs in industry or academia.
• Strong ML and deep learning fundamentals; expertise in LLMs or generative recommendations.
• Ability to lead complex technical work from problem definition through evaluation and deployment.
• Preferred: experience leading roadmaps or mentoring researchers and engineers.
• Experience with foundation-model training or post-training, reinforcement learning, or preference optimization.
• Expertise in generative retrieval, semantic tokenization, multimodal understanding, long-sequence user modeling, or efficient training and inference.
• Evidence of impact through production launches, reusable contributions, or publications at ML/NLP venues.

Responsibilities

• Own foundation models from research to production: define the modeling strategy and lead data, architecture, pre-training, mid-training, and post-training through deployment.
• Advance LLM-native, event-sequence-driven recommendation: model user behavior and intent to improve retrieval, ranking, and end-to-end generative recommendation.
• Build multimodal representations and semantic tokenizers that connect product, content, and behavioral signals and transfer across scenarios.
• Deliver measurable online impact: establish rigorous evaluations and experiments, balancing recommendation quality and long-term user value with latency and inference cost.
• Lead through hands-on execution: guide model and system design, align research and engineering partners, and mentor colleagues while staying close to code and experiments.

Skills

MS/PhD in CS

LLM impact

Generative systems

ML fundamentals

Cross-team leadership

Education

MS/PhD in CS

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Job description

Tech Lead Research Scientist - Recommendation Foundation Models (Global E-commerce)

Location:

Seattle

Employment Type:

Regular

Job Code:

A204730B

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Responsibilities

About the TeamTikTok’s Recommendation Foundation team builds shared foundation models for Global E-commerce. We are advancing event-sequence-driven generative recommendation with LLMs/VLMs, multimodal understanding, and reinforcement learning—moving beyond click prediction toward recommendation agents that understand user intent and connect people with products and content.We are looking for researchers and engineers with demonstrated LLM impact in industry or academia, or experience building and deploying generative recommendation systems at scale. You will shape foundation-model approaches for Global E-commerce and take them from research to production.

• Own foundation models from research to production: define the modeling strategy and lead data, architecture, pre-training, mid-training, and post-training through deployment.
• Advance LLM-native, event-sequence-driven recommendation: model user behavior and intent to improve retrieval, ranking, and end-to-end generative recommendation.
• Build multimodal representations and semantic tokenizers that connect product, content, and behavioral signals and transfer across scenarios.
• Deliver measurable online impact: establish rigorous evaluations and experiments, balancing recommendation quality and long-term user value with latency and inference cost.
• Lead through hands-on execution: guide model and system design, align research and engineering partners, and mentor colleagues while staying close to code and experiments.

Qualifications

• Minimum Qualifications:- MS/PhD in Computer Science, related technical field or equivalent industrial research experience.
• Demonstrated impact in LLMs through industry systems or academic research, or hands-on experience building and deploying large-scale generative recommendation systems.
• Strong machine learning and deep learning fundamentals, with expertise in LLMs, foundation models, or generative recommendation
• Ability to lead complex technical work from problem definition through evaluation and deployment, and collaborate across research and engineering.
• Preferred Qualifications：- Experience setting research roadmaps, leading shared modeling platforms or cross-team initiatives, and mentoring researchers and engineers.
• Experience with foundation-model training or post-training, reinforcement learning, or preference optimization.
• Expertise in generative retrieval, semantic tokenization, multimodal understanding, long-sequence user modeling, or efficient training and inference.
• Evidence of impact through production launches, reusable technical contributions, or publications at leading ML/NLP venues.

Job Information

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $241680 - $456000 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:

• 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