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

Responsibilities

Team Introduction
The TikTok Search Team is building a large-scale, full-stack search engine to serve billions of users worldwide. Our mission is to deliver not just relevant results, but an ideal search experience that is fast, personalized, and insightful.
We work across both general and vertical search scenarios, including PhotoText, User Search, Live and more - applying Large Language Models (LLMs), NLP, and Multimodal Understanding to continuously push the boundaries of search quality and system design.

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
- Improve TikTok's core and vertical search quality (e.g., PhotoText, User, Live etc.) across the full stack: query understanding, content understanding, ranking.
- Apply LLMs, NLP, and multimodal models to enhance semantic relevance and intent understanding.
- Collaborate with product and infra teams to deliver impactful features on a global scale.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:
- Final year or recent graduate with a background in Computer Science or a related technical field.
- Strong coding skills in C++/Python/Java.
- Solid understanding of algorithms and data structures.

Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience in one or more of: NLP, Search, Ranking, Ads, Recommender Systems, or Machine Learning.
- Familiarity with LLMs or multimodal learning techniques.
- Strong communication and collaboration skills.

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