About the role#
The E-commerce Recommendation and Marketing Algorithm team builds the core technology behind TikTok Mall. You will join this team to work on large-scale user growth and marketing algorithms. This role focuses on translating research into production systems to help users discover products and improve shopping experiences.
What you'll do#
- Optimize marketing and growth algorithms, including user value modeling and personalized messaging.
- Build a user lifecycle data system to address business challenges for TikTok Mall.
- Implement technical solutions for user growth engines like personalized push notifications and recommendation handling.
- Improve new user recommendations by refining recall and sorting algorithms.
- Use uplift models and operations research to drive marketing efficiency and e-commerce GMV growth.
What you'll need#
- Current enrollment in a PhD program for Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, or a related field.
- Strong fundamentals in machine learning and engineering, with the ability to write clean, efficient, and reproducible code.
- Deep experience in at least one of these areas: LLMs, foundation models, NLP, CV, RL, recommendation systems, search, or ads.
- Ability to articulate your technical design choices and explain where they fell short.
- Enthusiasm for deploying frontier methods into production environments.
- Skill in decomposing ambiguous problems that lack a standard answer.
- Preferred: Published papers in top AI conferences or journals, or success in ACM/Machine Learning competitions.
- Preferred: Experience with LTV estimation, uplift modeling, operations research, or sequence modeling.
Location & details#
- Location: Seattle, Washington.
- Type: Full-time intern.
- Modality: On-site.
- Compensation: $57 per hour.
- Hiring 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.
