Machine Learning Engineer Intern - TikTok Search Team - 2026 Start (PhD)

Tiktok • San Jose, CA

69d

About The Position

Our Search Engineering Team is responsible for building and owning TikTok's search engine which can provide our users with the best search experience. In TikTok Search Team, you'll have the opportunity to build full-stack search engine system and combine information retrieval technology with modern machine learning methods from related fields such as NLP, CV, and recommender system. We embrace a culture of self-direction, intellectual curiosity, openness, and problem-solving. We are looking for talented individuals to join us for an internship in 2026. PhD Internships at Tiktok aim to provide students with the opportunity to actively contribute to our products and research, and to the organization's future plans and emerging technologies. Our dynamic internship experience blends hands-on learning, enriching community-building and development events, and collaboration with industry experts. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis - we encourage you to apply early. Please state your availability clearly in your resume (Start date, End date).

Requirements

• Must be able to commit to a 12-week full-time work.
• Currently pursuing a PhD in Software Development, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• Must obtain work authorization in country of employment at the time of hire, and maintain ongoing work authorization during employment.
• Proficient coding skills and strong algorithm & data structure basis.
• Effective communication and teamwork skills.
• Experience in one or more of the following areas: NLP, Ranking, Ads, search engine, recommender system, distributed system, and machine learning.

Nice To Haves

• Graduating December 2026 onwards with intent to return to degree-program after the completion of the internship.
• Demonstrated software engineering experience from previous internship, work experience, coding competitions, or publications.
• High levels of creativity and quick problem-solving capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Participate in the improvement of the search core algorithm.
• Apply the industry's cutting-edge NLP and CV technology and leverage LLM to match the most relevant videos for each search query.
• Continuously improve the relevance of TikTok search.
• Solve the recommendation problem in search to increase personalization based on relevance.
• Understand users better through user behavior modeling.
• Use NLP, CV, and LLM for better video understanding from the perspective of the video itself and social network.
• Improve authority, credibility, and usefulness of search results.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Intern
• Industry: Broadcasting and Content Providers
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees