Machine Learning Engineer Graduate (Risk & Integrity) - 2027 Start

About the team

The USDS Platform and Community Integrity (PaCI) team is the architectural backbone of TikTok's Risk & Integrity in the US. We drive end-to-end integrity for TikTok and its expanding ecosystem, including Lemon8 and emerging affiliate platforms, by leveraging localized US data and state-of-the-art AI/LLM capabilities. Our mission is to deliver AI-driven algorithmic solutions that detect and neutralize systemic threats across critical domains: from Account Integrity, Feed, and Social to TikTok Live, Local Services, and User Growth. We architect the core ML infrastructure and risk intelligence that protect our billion-user ecosystem from adversarial threats. As a graduate, you will get opportunities to pursue bold ideas, tackle complex challenges, and unlock limitless growth. Successful candidates must be able to commit to an onboarding date by the end of the year. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis — early application is encouraged.

Responsibilities

• Global Ecosystem Governance: Lead the algorithmic architecture and governance for TikTok US across key domains, including account integrity, incentive abuse, content safety, and financial risk, ensuring a fair and secure ecosystem for a billion-user community.
• Universal Representation Modeling: Build high-precision, risk representation models leveraging massive heterogeneous data (video, live streams, audio, behavior sequences, and social graphs) to enable cross-scenario risk perception.
• Dynamic Adversarial Defense: Research and counter global adversarial threats (e.g., large-scale automated attacks, AIGC harmful content). Architect self-evolving defense systems that maintain robustness and resilience against rapid tactic shifts and data drift.
• Intelligent Decision-making: Drive the integration of Generative AI and Multimodal technologies into the risk lifecycle. Leverage LLMs and deep learning models to solve complex adjudication and interpretability challenges, balancing precision with automated, large-scale enforcement.

Minimum Qualifications

• Individuals who are completing or have recently completed a Bachelor's / Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Math, Statistics, or a related discipline.
• Solid foundation in Machine Learning; proficient in applying Transformer and GNN architectures to solve large-scale integrity challenges with social graph and behavior sequence data.
• Experience designing model evaluation systems that balance technical performance with product goals.
• Strong engineering and coding skills. Proficient in at least one language among Python, C++, or Go; familiar with distributed computing (e.g., Spark, Flink) and deep learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch).
• A passion for building world-class risk infrastructure and the ability to communicate effectively in a global, cross-cultural environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Agentic AI Experience: Hands-on experience building LLM-based Agents capable of task planning, tool-use, or closed-loop autonomous decision-making.
• LLM Security & Alignment: Experience in LLM Post-training or Fine-tuning (e.g., SFT, RLVR, RLHF) to optimize models for specific risk domains like fraud intent recognition or malicious redirection.
• Multimodal Expertise: Proven track record in video understanding or multimodal representation; ability to integrate visual, audio, and textual features to solve complex behavioral modeling challenges.
• Industry Vision: Experience in Integrity, Anti-Abuse, Safety, or Trustworthy AI at a large-scale internet platform.

Pay

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $100,320 – $177,840 annually. Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a candidate's qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package; this role may also be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives and restricted stock units.

Benefits

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; 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.

Schedule

The company is shifting from a hybrid work model to a fully in-person schedule up to 5 days a week.