Machine Learning Engineer Graduate (TikTok-Data-Search-Search Quality) - 2027 Start (PhD)

About the role

Our Search Engineering Team is responsible for building and owning TikTok's search engine, providing users with the best search experience. In the TikTok Search Team, you'll have the opportunity to build a full-stack search engine system and combine information retrieval technology with modern machine learning methods from fields such as NLP, CV, and recommender systems. We embrace a culture of self-direction, intellectual curiosity, openness, and problem-solving.

This full-time PhD Graduate role offers early-career researchers and engineers the chance to join one of our engineering teams, where you will participate in applied research and improvement of the search core algorithm. Successful candidates must commit to an onboarding date by the end of the year.

Responsibilities

• Participate in applied research and improvement of the search core algorithm, including:
  • Content understanding: Apply cutting-edge NLP and CV technology, leverage LLM to match the most relevant videos for each search query, and continuously improve search relevance.
  • User Behavior Modeling: Solve recommendation problems in search to enhance personalization while maintaining relevance and improving user understanding.
  • Video understanding: Use NLP, CV, and LLM for comprehensive video understanding from both the video itself and social network perspectives to improve authority, credibility, and usefulness of search results.
  • Search research and evaluation: Develop new retrieval, ranking, relevance evaluation, query understanding, multimodal search, or LLM application methods and translate research ideas into scalable product improvements.

Requirements

Minimum Qualifications:

• Currently pursuing or recently completed a PhD degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Information Retrieval, Natural Language Processing, Data Mining, Statistics, or a related technical field.
• Must have graduated with an applicable degree before onboarding.
• Research or practical experience in one or more areas: search, information retrieval, ranking, recommendation systems, natural language processing, multimodal learning, large language models, data mining, or machine learning systems.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Publications, preprints, patents, open-source contributions, or research projects in search, recommendation, NLP, information retrieval, machine learning, or related areas.
• Experience with large-scale retrieval, ranking, model training, evaluation, online experimentation, distributed systems, or production ML systems.
• Familiarity with relevance evaluation, query understanding, semantic retrieval, vector search, LLM applications, or multimodal search.
• Ability to define ambiguous technical problems, compare solution paths, and communicate trade-offs clearly.
• Interest in applying research to improve search quality, user experience, and product impact at a global scale.

As a condition of employment, all successful candidates must be able to establish authorization to work in the United States. The Company does not provide sponsorship or any immigration-related benefits for this position.

Pay

The base salary range for this position is $162,000 - $316,800 annually. Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on qualifications, skills, competencies, experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the total package, which may include additional 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, and 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).

The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.

About TikTok

TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. Our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. TikTok's global headquarters are in Los Angeles and Singapore, with additional offices in New York City, London, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo.

We strive to create an inclusive space where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. Our platform connects people globally, and our workplace reflects that diversity. We are committed to celebrating diverse voices and creating an environment that mirrors the communities we reach.