Data Scientist Intern (Privacy and Data Protection Office)- 2026 Summer (BS/MS)

Responsibilities

About the team
PDPO(Privacy and Data Protection Office) is the organization to lead, supervise, and empower all TikTok's privacy work in an accountable and industry leading way. This team is the expert in the landscape of privacy risks and passionate about consulting across the company on implementing the proper safeguards and technical mitigations to ensure that our users' privacy is honored across the TikTok's products and platforms.

We are looking for talented individuals to join us for an internship in 2026. Internships at TikTok aim to offer students industry exposure and hands-on experience. Turn your ambitions into reality as your inspiration brings infinite opportunities at TikTok.
Internships at TikTok aim to provide students with hands-on experience in developing fundamental skills and exploring potential career paths. A vibrant blend of social events and enriching development workshops will be available for you to explore. Here, you will utilize your knowledge in real-world scenarios while laying a strong foundation for personal and professional growth. It runs for 12 weeks.

Candidates can apply to a maximum of two positions and will be considered for jobs in the order you apply. The application limit is applicable to TikTok and its affiliates' jobs globally. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. We encourage you to apply as early as possible. Please state your availability clearly in your resume (Start date, End date).

Summer Start Dates:
- May 11th, 2026
- May 18th, 2026
- May 26th, 2026
- June 8th, 2026
- June 22nd, 2026

Online Assessment
Candidates who pass resume screening will be invited to participate in TikTok's technical online assessment.

- Work as Centralized Data Experts (CDE) to conduct impact sizing analysis during critical privacy incident investigation and response to data requests from media or regulators.
- Design and build systematic data solutions and standardized data runbooks to improve efficiency and ensure accuracy for incident and inquiry response.
- Sort out data inventories across the whole company in different formats and platforms to develop scalable monitoring systems that detect Privacy Risks and establish automated alerts.
- Develop data pipelines to automate metrics reporting, drive metrics to improve Operational Excellence.
- Conduct data investigation, data mining to find root causes, patterns and trends for privacy risks, and develop improvement or remediation plans for data protection.
- Establish solid design and best engineering practice for data access controls and management
- Collaborate with various XFN teams within the PDPO department and across organizations (e.g. legal, security, engineering and product) to drive various projects on privacy and data protection.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:
- Current pursuing an Undergraduate or Master in Computer Science, Engineering, Analytics, mathematics or related technical field
- Hands-on experience and deep understanding of various Big Data technologies (Hadoop, M/R, Hive, Spark, Metastore, Presto, Flume, Kafka, ClickHouse, Flink etc.)
- Proficient in SQL, Python, Schema design, ETL (Extraction, Transformation & Loading)
- Experience with data visualization tools or platforms (e.g. Dashboards, Tableau, etc.)
- Strong communication and project management skills. Be comfortable working with a large number of XFNs to lead and drive projects at different stages.

Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience and knowledge on data privacy & data security is a plus
- Passionate and self-motivated about big data and data privacy.