About the role#
This PhD internship focuses on the development of next-generation recommendation systems. You will work with the US Core Recommendation Team to refine how users discover content. The role involves research into generative recommendation systems, long-term user behavior modeling, and the integration of large language and multimodal models. You will contribute to post-training methods and reinforcement learning applications to improve feed quality and recommendation accuracy.
What you'll do#
- Research and develop algorithms to improve recommendation performance.
- Analyze large-scale user behavior and content data to drive model improvements.
- Deploy and evaluate recommendation systems in real-world scenarios.
- Collaborate with cross-disciplinary teams to build advanced systems.
What you'll need#
- Current enrollment in a PhD program for Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Statistics, or a related field.
- Research focus on recommendation systems, natural language processing, or multimodal learning.
- Proficiency in Python and familiarity with PyTorch or TensorFlow.
- Strong foundation in data structures, algorithms, and analytical problem-solving.
- Experience with large-scale machine learning systems or applied industry research is preferred.
- Prior work integrating LLMs or multimodal models is preferred.
- Familiarity with reinforcement learning, bandit algorithms, or offline RL for recommender systems is preferred.
- First-author publications in top-tier conferences like NeurIPS, ICML, ACL, CVPR, or KDD are preferred.
Location & details#
- Location: San Jose, California.
- Modality: On-site.
- Commitment: 12 weeks preferred.
- Employment: Full-time internship.
- Compensation: $60 per hour.
- 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.
