About the role#
This PhD internship focuses on building foundational large models for Global E-commerce. You will work on unifying user behavior, product data, and multimedia content into a single modeling framework. The goal is to design an agent-based system that handles task planning, tool usage, and multi-turn interactions to improve decision-making in demand forecasting and personalized recommendations.
What you'll do#
- Build recommendation systems to improve user experience, the content ecosystem, and platform security.
- Explore generative recommendation techniques including Diffusion Models, prompt learning, and multimodal content generation.
- Develop multi-model and cross-scenario systems that unify recommendations across livestreams, short videos, and search.
- Deliver end-to-end machine learning solutions for product challenges.
- Own the full stack machine learning system, optimizing both algorithms and infrastructure.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams to design product strategies and support growth in global markets.
What you'll need#
- Currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
- Strong foundation in machine learning and knowledge of current AI technologies.
- Experience with big data frameworks such as Hadoop, MapReduce, and Spark.
- Proficiency in TensorFlow or PyTorch for model training and deployment.
- Understanding of training acceleration techniques like mixed precision and distributed training.
- Familiarity with model compression and inference acceleration, such as quantization, pruning, distillation, and TensorRT optimization.
- Expertise in either Computer Vision and Multimodality or Natural Language Processing, demonstrated through research experience, competition achievements, or publications in top-tier conferences like CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ACL, or EMNLP.
Location & details#
- This role is based in San Jose, California.
- This is an on-site, full-time internship position.
- Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.
About TikTok
TikTok operates as an entertainment provider. The company maintains a global presence with offices in cities including Los Angeles, Singapore, New York, London, and Tokyo. It employs over 92,000 people. The organization is privately held.
How to get in at TikTok
Landing an internship at TikTok requires speed because early applicants often get seen before the pile grows. Intern Insider sends an instant alert the moment a role matching your target is published anywhere, so you can apply among the first. This gives you a better chance of your resume being reviewed while the team is still actively filling the position. You should aim to be one of the first people to submit your materials. Reaching out to the right person can also improve your chances of getting a response. Intern Insider surfaces the recruiters behind the company roles so you can contact them directly to ask about the role or a referral. This direct approach often works better than waiting for a response from a general application queue.
