Machine Learning Engineer Graduate (Ads Targeting)- 2027 Start

TikTok Ads Core ML Team is building next-generation automatic delivery products to evolve advertising into a global business and consolidate the delivery funnel framework, enabling parallel iteration across teams. The team’s mission is to develop a world-leading ranking model and framework that delivers value to collaborators, users, and customers.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to core ads targeting algorithms, including:
  • User Modeling: user interest/intent representation, embeddings, sequential behavior modeling, feature engineering
  • Lookalike Modeling: seed audience expansion, similarity learning, retrieval & ranking strategies, cold-start handling
  • Auto Targeting: automatic targeting selection/expansion, explore–exploit strategies, multi-objective optimization (performance/cost/reach)
• Support offline training and evaluation pipelines: sampling, feature building, training, metrics, and visualization
• Assist with online A/B testing and analysis; track key KPIs (CTR/CVR/CPA/ROAS) and troubleshoot issues
• Collaborate with product, data, and engineering teams to productionize models in the ads delivery stack (retrieval, prediction, bidding/budget constraints, delivery strategies)

Requirements

• Completing or recently completed a Bachelor’s/Master’s degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, or a related discipline
• Strong coding skills in Python; C++/Go is a plus
• Solid ML/DL/LLM fundamentals (LR/GBDT, DNNs, LLM, evaluation, regularization, tuning)
• Comfortable with data tools (SQL, Pandas); Spark/Flink/Hive is a plus
• Passionate about ads, recommenders, or growth and learning business metrics

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in ads targeting, recommender systems, search, retrieval/ranking, representation learning, or causal/experimentation
• Hands-on experience with PyTorch/TensorFlow; familiarity with production inference
• Large-scale data processing, feature platforms, or vector search (ANN)

Pay

The base salary range for this position is $128,000 – $256,000 annually. Compensation may vary based on qualifications, skills, experience, and location. Base pay is part of a total package that may include discretionary bonuses, incentives, and restricted stock units.

Benefits

• Day-one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 401(k) savings plan with company match
• Paid parental leave
• Short-term and long-term disability coverage
• Life insurance
• Wellbeing benefits
• 10 paid holidays per year
• 10 paid sick days per year
• 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire, with increasing accruals by tenure)