Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video, and they are seeking a Machine Learning Engineer Intern for their Data-Search-TikTok-Local Services team for Summer 2026. The role involves enhancing local services by improving user discovery through large-scale machine learning, focusing on search and recommendation systems.
Responsibilities
- Participate in the improvement of the search core algorithm, possible directions include:
- Large Language Model Application: Building AI search for local service needs by deploying and posttraining LLMs, constructing robust and comprehensive RAGs
- Content understanding/matching: Applying the industry's cutting-edge LLM technology to match the most relevant videos for each search query, and continuously improve the understanding of queries and relevance of TikTok search
- User Behavior Modeling: solving the recommendation problem in search, letting TikTok search increase the ability of personalization on the basis of 'relevant', and understand users better
Skills
- Currently pursuing a Bachelor/Master/PhD in Software Development, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline
- Able to commit to working for 12 weeks during Summer 2026
- Experience with coding in Python, Java, Golang, C#, or C++
- Experience deploying, training LLMs or building LLM powered applications
- Must obtain work authorization in the country of employment at the time of hire, and maintain ongoing work authorization during employment
- Graduating December 2026 onwards with intent to return to degree-program after the completion of the internship
- Experience deploying, training LLMs or building LLM powered applications
- Demonstrated software engineering or natural language processing, deep learning experience from previous internship, work experience, coding competitions, or publications
- High levels of creativity and quick problem-solving capabilities
Benefits
- Day one access to health insurance
- Life insurance
- Wellbeing benefits
- 10 paid holidays per year
- Paid sick time (56 hours if hired in first half of year, 40 if hired in second half of year)
- Housing allowance
Company Overview
TikTok is a short-form video entertainment app and social network platform. It is a sub-organization of ByteDance. It was founded in 2003, and is headquartered in Los Angeles, California, USA, with a workforce of 10001+ employees. Its website is https://www.tiktok.com.Company H1B Sponsorship
TikTok has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships, with 979 in 2025, 601 in 2024, 387 in 2023, 322 in 2022, 133 in 2021, 72 in 2020. Please note that this does not guarantee sponsorship for this specific role.
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