Software Engineer Intern (TikTok - Shoot Experience Optimization) - 2027 Summer

About the Team

Every TikTok video starts the same way: someone opens the camera. That moment — and everything that follows, from framing a shot to switching effects to hitting record — has to feel instant and effortless. We are the TikTok Camera Client Team, responsible for the experience and performance of the creation entry point used by hundreds of millions of people every day. Our mission is to make the camera fast to open, fluid to touch, and rock-solid on every device our users hold, from the latest flagship to the most entry-level phone. If you care about how an app actually feels in the hand, and about the engineering underneath that makes it feel that way, you came to the right place.

You will be working on two sides of the same problem. On the experience side, you'll help refine how creation feels — responsiveness of capture, smoothness of effect switching, gestures, and transitions — turning rough edges into flows that feel natural. On the performance side, you'll attack what quietly ruins that feeling at scale: slow cold start, jank, memory pressure, power drain, and stability issues on low-end devices. Partnering closely with product, design, and the effects and camera pipeline teams, you'll help build the tooling that makes this work measurable and repeatable. Small wins here are multiplied by hundreds of millions of daily creation sessions.

Responsibilities

• Participate in the user experience and performance optimization of TikTok Camera, the creation entry point used by hundreds of millions of people every day.
• Contribute to the optimization of the camera interaction experience — capture flows, effect switching, gestures, and transitions — to make creation feel faster, smoother, and more intuitive for users.
• Assist in the design and implementation of automated performance monitoring pipelines, such as automatic Perfetto trace capture, agent-assisted bottleneck analysis, and regression detection, to assess camera experience and performance at various stages.
• Use client-side optimization techniques such as cold start optimization, jank and memory analysis, and thread scheduling to improve camera responsiveness and stability across a massive range of mobile devices.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• Currently pursuing an Undergraduate/Graduate degree in Software Development, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• Able to commit to working for 12 weeks during the Summer of 2027.
• Strong knowledge of data structures and algorithms, proficient in at least one coding language, including but not limited to Java, Kotlin, Swift, Objective-C.
• Curiosity towards mobile client performance and user experience optimization, and outstanding ability to analyze and solve problems.
• Good grasp of software engineering and how to build a system in a scalable and extensive manner.

Preferred Qualifications

• Passion about user experience and performance, and solving challenging problems on real devices.
• Understanding of Android or iOS internals, such as UI rendering, threading, memory management, and application lifecycle.
• Experience in performance profiling and analysis tools such as Perfetto, Systrace, Instruments, or Android Studio Profiler.
• Interest in AI Agent development, and in exploring how LLM-powered tools can improve engineering workflows.

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 the first half of the year, 40 if hired in the second half).
• Housing allowance for interns who are not working 100% remote.

Schedule

This is a 12-week internship during the Summer of 2027.