Machine Learning Engineer, E-Commerce Risk Control - USDS

About the team

The E‑Commerce Risk Control team works to minimize the damage of inauthentic behaviors on TikTok E‑Commerce platforms, covering multiple classical and novel business risk areas such as account integrity, incentive abuse, malicious behaviors, brushing, click‑farm, information leakage, etc. In this team you’ll have first‑hand exposure to the company’s strategy in key security initiatives, especially in building scalable, robust, intelligent, privacy‑safe, secure and product‑friendly systems and solutions. The work is fast‑paced, transferable, and focused on making quick, solid differences while tackling novel challenges of a constantly evolving product ecosystem.

Responsibilities

• Invent, implement, and deploy state‑of‑the‑art machine learning algorithms, build prototypes, and explore entirely new conceptual solutions to address and mitigate business risks in TikTok e‑commerce/platforms, including but not limited to fraudulent merchants, cheating influencers, malicious users, information security issues, and cross‑domain risk challenges.
• Utilize techniques such as representation learning, graph models, deep learning, transfer learning, and multi‑task learning to improve the efficiency of problem detection, enabling rapid risk mitigation and optimizing various metrics of the e‑commerce community ecosystem.
• Monitor and attribute key metrics to promptly perceive changes in risk and business, proactively identify potential attacks, continuously optimize and adjust risk control strategies, and drive the development of risk governance and business model adjustments.
• Mine and analyze massive e‑commerce content and user‑behavior data to build both short‑term and long‑term user profiles, improving model accuracy and recall, as well as enhancing robustness, automation, and generalization capabilities.
• Advance risk machine‑learning capabilities in privacy/compliance, interpretability, risk perception, and analysis; innovate models and algorithms tailored to the characteristics of content e‑commerce, building an industry‑leading content e‑commerce risk control algorithm system.

Minimum Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Machine Learning, or other relevant STEM fields.
• 1+ years of hands‑on experience building and delivering machine learning models for large‑scale projects in internet companies.
• Proficient in C++/Java/Python with strong coding skills, and familiarity with at least one common machine learning/deep learning platform.
• Experience in e‑commerce/internet companies in fraud or risk control roles, with a track record of building fraud detection, anomaly detection, or other risk control models using relevant algorithms.
• Strong critical, objective, and thinking skills; able to reason and communicate in a results‑oriented, data‑driven manner with high autonomy.

Preferred Qualifications

• PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, Operations Research, or related fields.
• 5+ years of hands‑on experience in building and delivering large‑scale risk control projects in internet/e‑commerce companies, with proven success in large‑scale anti‑fraud data mining; strong coding (backend, infrastructure, algorithms) and system design skills.
• Strong technical leadership combined with hands‑on data mining and machine learning expertise; passionate about tackling TikTok’s data scale and business complexity; able to identify, plan, and lead both quick‑win tactics and long‑term strategies, guiding teams to counteract malicious actors on the platform.
• High sense of ownership, excellent communication and collaboration skills; able to end‑to‑end manage one or more critical, highly adversarial, constantly expanding, and cross‑functional platform/community security business areas.

About USDS

TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC is dedicated to the safety and security of millions of Americans who create, discover, and connect with what they love on the apps we operate. Established in compliance with the Executive Order signed by President Trump on September 25 2025, the joint venture operates under a comprehensive data privacy and cybersecurity program with defined safeguards to protect national security and secure U.S. user data, apps, and the algorithm. USDS safeguards the U.S. content ecosystem, holding decision‑making authority for trust and safety policies and moderation, and enables real‑time decision‑making, team development, and integrated execution through an on‑site, fully in‑person work model (up to five days a week).

Why Join Us

Inspiring creativity is at the core of TikTok’s mission. Our innovative product helps people authentically express themselves, discover and connect, and our global, diverse teams make that possible. We create value for our communities, inspire creativity, and bring joy. 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. By fostering an “Always Day 1” mindset, we achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our company, and our users.

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 worldwide, and so does our workplace. We celebrate diverse voices and strive to reflect the many communities we reach.

Reasonable Accommodation

USDS 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 at https://tinyurl.com/USDS-RA.

Pay

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $129,960 – $246,240 annually. Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies, experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the total package, which may also include discretionary bonuses/incentives and restricted stock units. Employees receive day‑one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with company match, paid parental leave, short‑term and long‑term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, 10 paid holidays, 10 paid sick days, and 17 days of paid personal time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure).

Schedule

The role follows a fully in‑person schedule, up to five days a week.