Software Engineer Intern (Global E-Commerce Search Infrastructure) - 2026 Summer (BS/MS)

Responsibilities

About the Team:
Search is no longer just a feature-it is the defining battleground that will determine whether TikTok Shop becomes the first truly global e-commerce super-app. Our Search platform is the core engine behind the "shelf-field" (product card) strategy, and the key to competing head-to-head in a global market worth over $10 trillion.
Search will propel TikTok Shop from tens of billions to hundreds of billions in annual GMV by activating real shopping intent, unlocking zero-sales products, and ensuring every item becomes instantly discoverable the moment a user types or taps.
We innovate where extreme performance, massive global scale, and uncompromising consistency meet.

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

We will prioritize candidates who are able to commit to these start dates. Please state your availability clearly in your resume (Start date, End date).

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

Responsibilities:
During this internship, you will join the E-Commerce Engineering team to tackle challenges in distributed systems and information retrieval. You will:
- Core Architecture: Design and develop high-performance, low-latency, and high-availability online search services. Optimize core components including the inverted index, vector retrieval (ANN/HNSW), and query understanding.
- Data Pipelines: Build highly scalable and fault-tolerant data pipelines using Flink, Kafka, and Spark to ensure product changes (price, stock, and new listings) are reflected in search results in near real-time.
- System Optimization: Drive latency and throughput optimizations for services handling hundreds of thousands of QPS. Troubleshoot complex distributed system issues to ensure 99.99% availability.
- Innovation: Participate in the research and implementation of next-generation search infrastructure, focusing on storage decoupling, cloud-native architecture, AI Search, and multi-modal fusion.
- Collaboration: Work with your mentor and ML engineers to productionize state-of-the-art models and build globalized large-scale recommendation systems.

Key Perks:
- Real Impact: Ship production code that affects hundreds of millions of users and billions in GMV.
- Mentorship: 1:1 guidance from engineers who built TikTok's core search & recommendation systems.
- Events: A vibrant blend of social events, speaker series, and hackathons.
- Return Offer: High full-time return offer rate for top performers.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:
- Currently pursuing a Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Development, or a related technical discipline.
- Must be able to commit to a 12-week full-time work period during Summer 2026.
- Solid programming proficiency in at least one general-purpose language: C++, Go, Java, or Python (C++/Go is heavily preferred for Infra roles).
- Strong foundation in computer science, specifically data structures, algorithms, and system design.
- Must obtain work authorization in the country of employment at the time of hire and maintain ongoing work authorization during employment.

Preferred Qualifications:
- Graduating December 2026 onwards with the intent to return to the degree program after the completion of the internship.
- Distributed Systems: Experience with search engines (e.g., Lucene, Elasticsearch, Vespa), distributed storage (RocksDB, Redis), or big data frameworks (Flink, Spark, Kafka).
- Problem Solving: Demonstrated software engineering experience from previous internships, open-source contributions, or advanced programming (e.g., ACM-ICPC).
- Domain Knowledge: Familiarity with information retrieval concepts (BM25, learning-to-rank) or vector similarity search (FAISS, HNSW).