AI Machine Learning Engineer - Graduate (TikTok Content Ecology) - 2027 Start (PhD) - Graduate (TikTok Content Ecology) - 2027 Start (PhD)
Aug 4, 2026 San Jose
About us
TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video and our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy.
- Size: 10,000+ employees
- Industry: Technology: Consumer Internet
Why you should apply for a job to TikTok:
4.5/5 in overall job satisfaction
4.5/5 in supportive management
100% say women are treated fairly and equally to men
100% would recommend this company to other women
100% say the CEO supports gender diversity
Ratings are based on anonymous reviews by Fairygodboss members. See all reviews ›
Responsibilities
The TikTok Content Ecology team builds the core algorithm systems for content understanding and ecosystem governance on TikTok. Drawing on platform-scale video content and interaction signals, we apply multimodal large models, natural language processing, computer vision, and recommendation systems to build a content foundation platform supporting search, local services, product infrastructure, PGC, and UGC across TikTok's global business.
Our work spans three areas:
1. Unified content understanding. We use multimodal large models for fine-grained semantic parsing of video, building a cross-category, multilingual labeling and event knowledge system that provides reliable foundations for search, recommendation, and safety.
2. Platform-level content governance. We develop high-precision recognition and review models that handle billions of pieces of content daily, addressing low-quality and non-compliant material and supporting compliance requirements for goods and content in areas such as local services.
3. Business growth and user experience. Through trending discovery, inspiration recommendations, and intelligent customer service, we serve creators and users worldwide, improving distribution efficiency, the precision of creative recommendations, and the speed of customer service response.
We work on understanding hundreds of languages and processing multimodal data at hundred-billion scale, in a global business that keeps growing. You will apply NLP, multimodal, and large model technology at real-world scale, seeing your work reach hundreds of millions of users.
About the Team
The Content Ecology team builds next-generation AI products and scalable platform capabilities that power how content is created, understood, discovered, and governed across TikTok globally. Leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as LLMs/MLLMs, multimodal learning, and Agentic AI, the team addresses complex, high-impact challenges across Local Services, Search, Short Drama, Creator Assistance, and AIGC. By uniting frontier AI research with product innovation, our team drives scalable solutions that elevate experiences for users, creators, and merchants worldwide.
We are looking for talented individuals to join our team. As a graduate, you will get opportunities to pursue bold ideas, tackle complex challenges, and unlock limitless growth.
Successful candidates must be able to commit to an onboarding date by the end of the year. Please state your availability and graduation date clearly in your resume.
Responsibilities:
- Develop and optimize LLM/MLLM, Agent, NLP, CV, and recommendation models to improve TikTok's content ecosystem.
- Design, build, and optimize advanced Agentic AI frameworks, focusing on core components like planning, tool use, skills, and memory.
- Implement multimodal AI solutions, integrating video, text, and speech understanding.
- Train and fine-tune deep learning models using TensorFlow, PyTorch, or other ML frameworks.
- Deploy and scale machine learning solutions in a distributed computing environment.
- Work closely with AI researchers, software engineers, and business teams to apply AI technologies effectively.
Qualifications
Minimum Qualifications:
- Individuals who are completing or have recently completed a PhD degree in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, applied mathematics, or a related discipline.
- Strong programming skills in Python, C++, or similar languages.
- Hands-on experience with deep learning frameworks such as TensorFlow or PyTorch.
- Hands-on experience with LLMs/MLLMs, specifically focusing on Post-Training (SFT, RL) and/or Inference optimization.
- Solid understanding of machine learning fundamentals and the modern AI stack.
- Strong proficiency in integrating AI tools into knowledge discovery and research workflows.
- Excellent communication skills to collaborate across teams.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience with distributed computing and optimizing AI models for real-world applications.
- Experience in applying machine learning techniques to enhance business and user experiences.
- Deep knowledge of agent architectures, including planning, tool use (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex), skills, and memory systems.
- Strong experience in working with Agentic modeling, workflows, and frameworks.
- Publications in top AI/ML conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, ACL, AAAI, etc.) or strong contributions to open-source AI projects.
Job Information
[For Pay Transparency] Compensation Description (annually)
The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $128000 - $316800 annually.
Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate's qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units.
Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others. Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure).
The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.
For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates:
Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:
1. Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;
2. Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and
3. Exercising sound judgment.
The TikTok Content Ecology team builds the core algorithm systems for content understanding and ecosystem governance on TikTok. Drawing on platform-scale video content and interaction signals, we apply multimodal large models, natural language processing, computer vision, and recommendation systems to build a content foundation platform supporting search, local services, product infrastructure, PGC, and UGC across TikTok's global business.
Our work spans three areas:
1. Unified content understanding. We use multimodal large models for fine-grained semantic parsing of video, building a cross-category, multilingual labeling and event knowledge system that provides reliable foundations for search, recommendation, and safety.
2. Platform-level content governance. We develop high-precision recognition and review models that handle billions of pieces of content daily, addressing low-quality and non-compliant material and supporting compliance requirements for goods and content in areas such as local services.
3. Business growth and user experience. Through trending discovery, inspiration recommendations, and intelligent customer service, we serve creators and users worldwide, improving distribution efficiency, the precision of creative recommendations, and the speed of customer service response.
We work on understanding hundreds of languages and processing multimodal data at hundred-billion scale, in a global business that keeps growing. You will apply NLP, multimodal, and large model technology at real-world scale, seeing your work reach hundreds of millions of users.
About the Team
The Content Ecology team builds next-generation AI products and scalable platform capabilities that power how content is created, understood, discovered, and governed across TikTok globally. Leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as LLMs/MLLMs, multimodal learning, and Agentic AI, the team addresses complex, high-impact challenges across Local Services, Search, Short Drama, Creator Assistance, and AIGC. By uniting frontier AI research with product innovation, our team drives scalable solutions that elevate experiences for users, creators, and merchants worldwide.
We are looking for talented individuals to join our team. As a graduate, you will get opportunities to pursue bold ideas, tackle complex challenges, and unlock limitless growth.
Successful candidates must be able to commit to an onboarding date by the end of the year. Please state your availability and graduation date clearly in your resume.
Responsibilities:
- Develop and optimize LLM/MLLM, Agent, NLP, CV, and recommendation models to improve TikTok's content ecosystem.
- Design, build, and optimize advanced Agentic AI frameworks, focusing on core components like planning, tool use, skills, and memory.
- Implement multimodal AI solutions, integrating video, text, and speech understanding.
- Train and fine-tune deep learning models using TensorFlow, PyTorch, or other ML frameworks.
- Deploy and scale machine learning solutions in a distributed computing environment.
- Work closely with AI researchers, software engineers, and business teams to apply AI technologies effectively.
Minimum Qualifications:
- Individuals who are completing or have recently completed a PhD degree in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, applied mathematics, or a related discipline.
- Strong programming skills in Python, C++, or similar languages.
- Hands-on experience with deep learning frameworks such as TensorFlow or PyTorch.
- Hands-on experience with LLMs/MLLMs, specifically focusing on Post-Training (SFT, RL) and/or Inference optimization.
- Solid understanding of machine learning fundamentals and the modern AI stack.
- Strong proficiency in integrating AI tools into knowledge discovery and research workflows.
- Excellent communication skills to collaborate across teams.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience with distributed computing and optimizing AI models for real-world applications.
- Experience in applying machine learning techniques to enhance business and user experiences.
- Deep knowledge of agent architectures, including planning, tool use (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex), skills, and memory systems.
- Strong experience in working with Agentic modeling, workflows, and frameworks.
- Publications in top AI/ML conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, ACL, AAAI, etc.) or strong contributions to open-source AI projects.
The TikTok Content Ecology team builds the core algorithm systems for content understanding and ecosystem governance on TikTok. Drawing on platform-scale video content and interaction signals, we apply multimodal large models, natural language processing, computer vision, and recommendation systems to build a content foundation platform supporting search, local services, product infrastructure, PGC, and UGC across TikTok's global business.
Our work spans three areas:
1. Unified content understanding. We use multimodal large models for fine-grained semantic parsing of video, building a cross-category, multilingual labeling and event knowledge system that provides reliable foundations for search, recommendation, and safety.
2. Platform-level content governance. We develop high-precision recognition and review models that handle billions of pieces of content daily, addressing low-quality and non-compliant material and supporting compliance requirements for goods and content in areas such as local services.
3. Business growth and user experience. Through trending discovery, inspiration recommendations, and intelligent customer service, we serve creators and users worldwide, improving distribution efficiency, the precision of creative recommendations, and the speed of customer service response.
We work on understanding hundreds of languages and processing multimodal data at hundred-billion scale, in a global business that keeps growing. You will apply NLP, multimodal, and large model technology at real-world scale, seeing your work reach hundreds of millions of users.
About the Team
The Content Ecology team builds next-generation AI products and scalable platform capabilities that power how content is created, understood, discovered, and governed across TikTok globally. Leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as LLMs/MLLMs, multimodal learning, and Agentic AI, the team addresses complex, high-impact challenges across Local Services, Search, Short Drama, Creator Assistance, and AIGC. By uniting frontier AI research with product innovation, our team drives scalable solutions that elevate experiences for users, creators, and merchants worldwide.
We are looking for talented individuals to join our team. As a graduate, you will get opportunities to pursue bold ideas, tackle complex challenges, and unlock limitless growth.
Successful candidates must be able to commit to an onboarding date by the end of the year. Please state your availability and graduation date clearly in your resume.
Responsibilities:
- Develop and optimize LLM/MLLM, Agent, NLP, CV, and recommendation models to improve TikTok's content ecosystem.
- Design, build, and optimize advanced Agentic AI frameworks, focusing on core components like planning, tool use, skills, and memory.
- Implement multimodal AI solutions, integrating video, text, and speech understanding.
- Train and fine-tune deep learning models using TensorFlow, PyTorch, or other ML frameworks.
- Deploy and scale machine learning solutions in a distributed computing environment.
- Work closely with AI researchers, software engineers, and business teams to apply AI technologies effectively.
Qualifications
Minimum Qualifications:
- Individuals who are completing or have recently completed a PhD degree in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, applied mathematics, or a related discipline.
- Strong programming skills in Python, C++, or similar languages.
- Hands-on experience with deep learning frameworks such as TensorFlow or PyTorch.
- Hands-on experience with LLMs/MLLMs, specifically focusing on Post-Training (SFT, RL) and/or Inference optimization.
- Solid understanding of machine learning fundamentals and the modern AI stack.
- Strong proficiency in integrating AI tools into knowledge discovery and research workflows.
- Excellent communication skills to collaborate across teams.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience with distributed computing and optimizing AI models for real-world applications.
- Experience in applying machine learning techniques to enhance business and user experiences.
- Deep knowledge of agent architectures, including planning, tool use (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex), skills, and memory systems.
- Strong experience in working with Agentic modeling, workflows, and frameworks.
- Publications in top AI/ML conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, ACL, AAAI, etc.) or strong contributions to open-source AI projects.
Job Information
[For Pay Transparency] Compensation Description (annually)
The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $128000 - $316800 annually.
Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate's qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units.
Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others. Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure).
The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.
For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates:
Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:
1. Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;
2. Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and
3. Exercising sound judgment.
Responsibilities
ResponsibilitiesThe TikTok Content Ecology team builds the core algorithm systems for content understanding and ecosystem governance on TikTok. Drawing on platform-scale video content and interaction signals, we apply multimodal large models, natural language processing, computer vision, and recommendation systems to build a content foundation platform supporting search, local services, product infrastructure, PGC, and UGC across TikTok's global business.
Our work spans three areas:
1. Unified content understanding. We use multimodal large models for fine-grained semantic parsing of video, building a cross-category, multilingual labeling and event knowledge system that provides reliable foundations for search, recommendation, and safety.
2. Platform-level content governance. We develop high-precision recognition and review models that handle billions of pieces of content daily, addressing low-quality and non-compliant material and supporting compliance requirements for goods and content in areas such as local services.
3. Business growth and user experience. Through trending discovery, inspiration recommendations, and intelligent customer service, we serve creators and users worldwide, improving distribution efficiency, the precision of creative recommendations, and the speed of customer service response.
We work on understanding hundreds of languages and processing multimodal data at hundred-billion scale, in a global business that keeps growing. You will apply NLP, multimodal, and large model technology at real-world scale, seeing your work reach hundreds of millions of users.
About the Team
The Content Ecology team builds next-generation AI products and scalable platform capabilities that power how content is created, understood, discovered, and governed across TikTok globally. Leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as LLMs/MLLMs, multimodal learning, and Agentic AI, the team addresses complex, high-impact challenges across Local Services, Search, Short Drama, Creator Assistance, and AIGC. By uniting frontier AI research with product innovation, our team drives scalable solutions that elevate experiences for users, creators, and merchants worldwide.
We are looking for talented individuals to join our team. As a graduate, you will get opportunities to pursue bold ideas, tackle complex challenges, and unlock limitless growth.
Successful candidates must be able to commit to an onboarding date by the end of the year. Please state your availability and graduation date clearly in your resume.
Responsibilities:
- Develop and optimize LLM/MLLM, Agent, NLP, CV, and recommendation models to improve TikTok's content ecosystem.
- Design, build, and optimize advanced Agentic AI frameworks, focusing on core components like planning, tool use, skills, and memory.
- Implement multimodal AI solutions, integrating video, text, and speech understanding.
- Train and fine-tune deep learning models using TensorFlow, PyTorch, or other ML frameworks.
- Deploy and scale machine learning solutions in a distributed computing environment.
- Work closely with AI researchers, software engineers, and business teams to apply AI technologies effectively.
Qualifications
QualificationsMinimum Qualifications:
- Individuals who are completing or have recently completed a PhD degree in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, applied mathematics, or a related discipline.
- Strong programming skills in Python, C++, or similar languages.
- Hands-on experience with deep learning frameworks such as TensorFlow or PyTorch.
- Hands-on experience with LLMs/MLLMs, specifically focusing on Post-Training (SFT, RL) and/or Inference optimization.
- Solid understanding of machine learning fundamentals and the modern AI stack.
- Strong proficiency in integrating AI tools into knowledge discovery and research workflows.
- Excellent communication skills to collaborate across teams.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience with distributed computing and optimizing AI models for real-world applications.
- Experience in applying machine learning techniques to enhance business and user experiences.
- Deep knowledge of agent architectures, including planning, tool use (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex), skills, and memory systems.
- Strong experience in working with Agentic modeling, workflows, and frameworks.
- Publications in top AI/ML conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, ACL, AAAI, etc.) or strong contributions to open-source AI projects.
Additional Information
- Salary: $128,000 – $316,800
- Posted: Aug 4, 2026