About the role#
The Global E-commerce Recommendation Live Algorithm team manages the core recommendation stack for live commerce. We handle the entire pipeline from recall and pre-ranking to ranking and mixed ranking. Our work involves live room status changes, sparse conversion signals, and understanding user intent across content and transaction scenarios. As a PhD intern, you will contribute to our products and research while working alongside industry experts.
What you'll do#
- Build and optimize recommendation models to improve GMV, conversion, watch time, and long-term user value.
- Develop cross-domain and multimodal modeling solutions that connect videos, live streams, products, and user behavior.
- Advance next-generation technologies like generative recommendation, large recommendation models, reinforcement learning, and long-term value optimization.
- Partner with cross-functional teams to launch scalable solutions, run experiments, and turn research into measurable business impact.
What you'll need#
- Currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, Operations Research, or a related technical discipline.
- Solid foundation in machine learning and experience in areas such as recommendation systems, search, advertising, NLP, multimodal learning, or large-scale applied AI.
- Strong programming skills in Python or C++ and hands-on experience with deep learning frameworks like PyTorch.
- Understanding of data structures, algorithms, and large-scale model training or production machine learning systems.
- Analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to translate business problems into effective modeling solutions.
- Self-driven, results-oriented, and able to take ownership of model iteration and online impact.
- Preferred experience includes work with LLMs, multimodal foundation models, long-sequence user behavior modeling, or large-scale distributed training.
- Preferred candidates may have publications in top-tier conferences like NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, KDD, ACL, CVPR, SIGIR, or RecSys.
Location & details#
- Location: Seattle, Washington.
- Type: Full-time internship.
- Modality: On-site.
- Compensation: $57 per hour.
- Review process: 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.
