Jobs · OTHR · California

Research Scientist - Data and State Acceleration - Global Frontier Tech Recruitment Program - 2027 Start (PhD)

TikTok · San Jose, CA · 2 days ago
OTHR$156k–$388k/yrFull-time

About the role

We are looking for talented individuals to join our team in 2027. As a graduate, you will get opportunities to pursue bold ideas, tackle complex challenges, and unlock limitless growth. Launch your career where inspiration is infinite at our Company.

Responsibilities

  • Design and implement real-time and offline data architecture for large-scale recommendation systems.
  • Build scalable and high-performance streaming Lakehouse systems that power feature pipelines, model training, and real-time inference.
  • Collaborate with ML platform teams to support PyTorch-based model training workflows and design efficient data formats and access patterns for large-scale samples and features.
  • Own core components of our distributed storage and processing stack, from file format to stream compaction to metadata management.

Qualifications

  • Individuals who are completing or recently completed a PhD in Software Development, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
  • Experience building large-scale distributed systems, preferably in storage, stream processing, or ML infrastructure.
  • Understanding of Apache Flink internals, with hands-on experience in state management, connectors, or UDFs.
  • Familiarity with modern Lakehouse technologies such as Apache Paimon, Iceberg, Delta Lake, or Hudi, especially around incremental ingestion, schema evolution, and snapshot isolation.

Preferred Qualification(s)

  • Experience in designing and optimizing Flink + Paimon architectures for unified batch/stream processing.
  • Familiarity with feature storage and training data pipelines, and their integration with PyTorch, especially for large-scale model training.
  • Knowledge of columnar file formats (Parquet, ORC, Lance) and how they are used in feature engineering or ML data loading.
  • Proficiency in Java/Scala/C++, and strong debugging/performance tuning ability.
  • Previous experience in Lakehouse metadata management, compaction scheduling, or data versioning.
  • Knowledge of legacy data stores like HBase/Kudu.

Job Information

[For Pay Transparency] Compensation Description (Annually) The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $156000 - $387600 annually. Compensation may vary 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).

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