Machine Learning Engineer, E-Commerce - USDS

About the role

The Joint Venture is dedicated to the safety and security of millions of Americans who use our apps. It operates under defined safeguards to protect national security and secure U.S. user data, apps, and the algorithm. We uphold trust and safety policies and moderate content to ensure a safe environment.

Responsibilities

• Architect and develop sophisticated LLM-based systems to process high-dimensional unstructured data from diverse sources.
• Define and implement complex semantic understanding frameworks, including fine-grained intent classification and entity extraction, to achieve deep contextual awareness.
• Apply state-of-the-art techniques to enhance model performance, including Instruction Tuning, RLHF/DPO, and Contextual Prompt Engineering.
• Optimize model serving for production environments using quantization, distillation, and efficient attention mechanisms (e.g., FlashAttention, vLLM).

Qualifications

• Minimum Qualifications: MS or PhD in Computer Science, AI, Mathematics, or a related field; 1+ years of professional experience in Machine Learning, NLP, or Computer Vision; proficiency in one of C++, Python, Go, or Java.
• PREFERRED Qualifications: Experience in fine-tuning, distillation, or reinforcement learning for large language models; proficiency in multilingual NLP, machine translation, and cross-lingual dialogue modeling; experience in developing and optimizing e-commerce video and product multimodal large models; strong understanding of e-commerce policies, dispute resolution workflows, and merchant-buyer interactions.

About USDS

USDS TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC is a company dedicated to the safety and security of millions of Americans who use our apps. The Joint Venture was established in compliance with the Executive Order signed by President Trump on September 25, 2025. We operate 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. We safeguard the U.S. content ecosystem and hold decision-making authority for trust and safety policies and moderation. We help ensure Americans can continue to express their creativity, discover new hobbies and interests, and build thriving communities and businesses on a global scale.

Why Join Us

We inspire creativity and innovation. Our mission is to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect. Our global, diverse teams make this possible. We strive to do great things with great people, leading with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. We embrace challenges and foster an "Always Day 1" mindset to achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our company, and our users. Join us to create value for our communities, inspire creativity, and bring joy every day.

Diversity & Inclusion

We are 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. We celebrate our diverse voices and create an environment that reflects the many communities we reach.

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

Job Information

[For Pay Transparency] Compensation Description (Annually): The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $122,574 - $259,200 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.

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.