Software Engineer Intern (Global E-commerce-Search) - 2027 Fall

Global E-Commerce Search Infrastructure builds the systems that power product discovery on TikTok Shop. We work across retrieval, indexing, query understanding, real-time data processing, and AI-enabled search infrastructure. Our goal is to help customers find relevant products quickly and reliably while operating services on a global scale.

About the role

As an intern, you will be matched with one well-scoped project based on your experience, interests, and team priorities. You will work with a dedicated mentor and collaborate with engineers across search, machine learning, and data infrastructure. Our internship program offers hands-on experience, industry exposure, and opportunities to apply your knowledge to real-world challenges while building a strong foundation for personal and professional growth.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement a scoped feature or system component with guidance from your mentor.
• Write clear, maintainable, and tested production code in languages such as C++, Go, Java, or Python.
• Participate in design discussions, code reviews, testing, documentation, and launch-readiness reviews.
• Use metrics and benchmarks to evaluate system quality, such as latency, throughput, reliability, freshness, or search relevance.
• Investigate technical issues, identify root causes, and propose practical improvements.
• Present your work and results to the team at the end of the internship.

Requirements

Minimum Qualifications

• Currently pursuing a Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, or a related technical field.
• Able to work full-time for 12 consecutive weeks.
• Programming experience in at least one general-purpose language, such as C++, Go, Java, or Python.
• Understanding of data structures, algorithms, and object-oriented or modular software design.
• Ability to communicate effectively and work collaboratively in a team environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Coursework, research, personal projects, open-source contributions, or prior internships involving software systems.
• Search or information-retrieval concepts, such as inverted indexes, BM25, learning-to-rank, vector search, FAISS, or HNSW.
• Distributed systems, databases, storage systems, or data-processing frameworks such as Kafka, Flink, or Spark.
• AI or machine-learning infrastructure, model serving, retrieval-augmented generation, or agentic systems.
• Performance analysis, debugging, Linux development, or competitive programming.

Pay

The hourly rate for this position is $42.75.

Benefits

• Day one access to health insurance, life insurance, and wellbeing benefits.
• 10 paid holidays per year.
• Paid sick time (56 hours if hired in first half of year, 40 if hired in second half).
• Housing allowance for interns who are not working 100% remote.