Software Engineer intern (Global Traffic Architecture) - 2027 Summer

About the Team

The Global Traffic Architecture (GTA) team at ByteDance designs, builds, and operates large-scale, multi-cloud network services that accelerate and optimize traffic for TikTok and a broad portfolio of ByteDance internal applications. Our platform delivers core capabilities including L4/L7 load balancing, L4/L7 traffic acceleration, global ingress, and forward proxy. Joining GTA means partnering with a world-class team to build TikTok-scale network infrastructure that serves billions of users worldwide.

To further support ByteDance's continued global growth, the GTA team is looking for interns to contribute to our multi-cloud, cloud-native traffic architecture. Our internship program offers students hands-on experience, industry exposure, and opportunities to apply their knowledge to real-world challenges while building a strong foundation for personal and professional growth. Interns will gain practical experience, explore potential career paths, and participate in social events, learning programs, and development workshops alongside industry professionals.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop core traffic software (L4/L7 load balancers, caching) on our traffic platform to process terabyte-scale data in real time.
• Build data pipelines and telemetry systems that enable data-driven traffic control.
• Develop API acceleration and other networking services on top of our multi-cloud traffic platform.
• Troubleshoot production issues and drive performance tuning for online traffic.
• Research emerging technologies to make traffic processing more efficient and scalable.
• Build platform capabilities—control plane, self-service APIs, developer tooling, and supporting infrastructure—that power the Global Traffic Architecture.
• Develop AI-powered engineering productivity tools and agents (LLM-based assistants, workflow automation, and operations copilots) to accelerate development, diagnosis, and operations across the traffic platform.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• Currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related technical discipline.
• Proficiency in developing systems in one or more of Python, Go, Rust, C, or C++, with strong hands-on experience in Linux environments.
• Solid understanding of core network protocols, including TCP/IP, HTTP/HTTPS, and DNS.
• Familiarity with AI/LLM application development, including areas such as prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), or the design of AI-assisted developer tools.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in AI Agent development, such as building LLM-powered agents, tool use, multi-agent systems, or agent frameworks.
• Experience developing proxy software such as Nginx or Envoy.
• Experience with modern network protocols such as HTTP/2, HTTP/3 (QUIC), and TLS 1.3.

Pay

The hourly rate range for this position is $45-$45.

Benefits

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

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