Machine Learning Engineer Graduate (TikTok Local Service Search) - 2026 Start (BS/MS)

Responsibilities

Team Introduction
Our Search Team enhances local services by improving user discovery of hospitality, dining, and leisure experiences while driving ecosystem growth. They leverage large-scale machine learning to refine search and recommendation systems, focusing on relevance and query understanding improvement by LLM, CTR/CVR prediction, and optimize LLM powered local service formats in search.

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.

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 early.

Responsibilities
- Support the local video service business to enhance user discovery of life services such as hospitality, dining, and leisure.
- Improve the search experience in local services and promote ecosystem growth.
- Utilize large-scale machine learning techniques in search and recommendation scenarios with billions of users to: Improve user shopping experiences & Enhance conversion efficiency.
- Design and implement local services search algorithms across the full stack, including: Query analysis, relevance, recall, coarse ranking, fine ranking, and blended ranking. Personalized behavior modeling for relevance computation; CTR (Click-Through Rate) prediction, CVR (Conversion Rate) prediction. Vector recall and value blending.
- Utilize LLMs to understand users' complex local service search queries, summarize key points from numerous videos, comments, and POI reviews, and combine all those into structured AI search formats. Get involved in real-world AI applications, by building a revolutionized search experience for local service queries like destination choices, hotel searching, tourism, food & beverage reviews.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:
- Final year or recent graduate with a background in computer science or a related technical discipline.
- Proficient coding skills and strong algorithm & data structure using C++/Python/Java.
- Have a solid knowledge of machine learning and practical experience in applying it.

Preferred Qualifications
- Effective communication and teamwork skills.
- Modeling experience in one or more of the following areas: Ads, Search engine, Recommender System, NLP/CV.
- Have a solid foundation in algorithms related to LLMs, including but not limited to comprehensive learning and practical experience in areas such as single-modal/multi-modal LLM application and deployment.

By submitting an application for this role, you accept and agree to our global applicant privacy policy, which may be accessed here: https://careers.tiktok.com/legal/privacy

If you have any questions, please reach out to us at apac-earlycareers@tiktok.com