Machine Learning Engineer Graduate Short Video Content Ecology - 2026 Start (PhD)

Responsibilities

The Content Ecology team aims to leverage AI and machine learning algorithms to build a suite of strategic models and platform solutions that enhance user experience across various sub-businesses under the short video business line.

Our focus areas include:
- TikTok Intelligent Customer Service: Utilizing large language models to address intelligent customer service and commercial customer service challenges.
- TikTok Local Services: Employing multimodal understanding technologies to solve content understanding and governance issues in local services.
- TikTok Search: Applying AI capabilities to provide hot event/topic discovery, event extraction, and summarization for the search business line.
- TikTok Creator Understanding: Developing multimodal creator modeling and profiling capabilities to support downstream recommendation, search, and content safety applications, enhancing the platform's understanding of creators' behavior, styles, and influence.
- Agentic LLM Applications: Building agent-style LLM systems that can autonomously plan, act, and interact to solve complex user and business problems across domains such as customer service, search, and creator tools.

We are looking for talented individuals to join our team in 2026. 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 TikTok.

Successful candidates must be able to commit to an onboarding date by end of year 2026. Please state your availability and graduation date clearly in your resume.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis - we encourage you to apply early.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:
- PhD Degree in Computer Science or a related major.
- Experienced in programming and algorithmic skills, proficient in languages such as Python or C++.
- Deep understanding of one of the following areas: NLP (Natural Language Processing), CV (Computer Vision), LLM (Large Language Models)/MLLM (Multimodal Language Models), Search, or Agentic AI.
- Experienced in one or more of the following topics: TensorFlow, PyTorch, or other machine learning frameworks.
- Good team communication and collaboration skills.

Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience in building ML model development for large-scale consumer-facing applications.
- Experience or domain expertise in one or more of the following areas is preferred: NLP, CV, LLM/MLLM, Agentic LLMs, Dialog Systems, Search, Recommendation Systems, or Creator Modeling.
- Published papers or hands-on project experience in the fields of NLP, CV, agent-based systems, or multimodal technologies.

Job Information

[For Pay Transparency] Compensation Description (annually)

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $136800 - $259200 annually.

Compensation may vary outside of this range 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).

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

For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates:

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:

1. Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;

2. Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and