Backend Engineer Intern (TikTok Recommendation Ecosystem Infrastructure) - 2026 Start (BS/MS)

TikTok

4.5

(6)

Singapore

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.
  • Employee well-being is supported via hybrid work, short-term counseling through our EAP and a premium subscription to Headspace.
  • We embrace diversity across all dimensions and provide employees with 9 employee resource groups globally, including our WOMEN ERG.
  • Comprehensive parental leave policy as well as fertility treatment through healthcare providers with a $20,000 lifetime maximum.
  • #7532004520819034376

    Position summary

    e reality as your inspiration brings infinite opportunities at TikTok.

    Candidates can apply to a maximum of two positions and will be considered for jobs in the order you apply. The application limit is applicable to TikTok and its affiliates' jobs globally.

    Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis - we encourage you to apply early.
    Successful candidates must be able to commit to at least 3 months long internship period.

    Responsibilities

    • Design and implement real-time and offline data architecture for large-scale recommendation systems.
    • Build scalable and high-performance streaming Lakehouse systems that power feature pipelines, model training, and real-time inference.
    • Collaborate with ML platform teams to support PyTorch-based model training workflows and design efficient data formats and access patterns for large-scale samples and features.
    • Own core components of our distributed storage and processing stack, from file format to stream compaction to metadata management.

    Qualifications

    Minimum Qualifications:

    • Undergraduate, or Postgraduate who is currently pursuing a degree/master in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Systems or a related technical major.
    • Experience building large-scale distributed systems, preferably in storage, stream processing, or ML infrastructure.
    • Solid understanding of Apache Flink internals, with hands-on experience in state management, connectors, or UDFs.
    • Familiarity with modern Lakehouse technologies such as Apache Paimon, Iceberg, Delta Lake, or Hudi, especially around incremental ingestion, schema evolution, and snapshot isolation.

    Preferred Qualifications:

    • Experience in designing and optimizing Flink + Paimon architectures for unified batch/stream processing.
    • Familiarity with feature storage and training data pipelines, and their integration with PyTorch, especially for large-scale model training.
    • Knowledge of columnar file formats (Parquet, ORC, Lance) and how they are used in feature engineering or ML data loading.
    • Proficiency in Java/Scala/C++, and strong debugging/performance tuning ability.
    • Previous experience in Lakehouse metadata management, compaction scheduling, or data versioning is a plus.
    • (Optional) Knowledge of legacy data stores like HBase/Kudu is a bonus but not required.

    By submitting an application for this role, you accept and agree to our global applicant privacy policy, which may be accessed here: https://careers.tiktok.com/legal/privacy

    If you have any questions, please reach out to us at [email protected]

    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.
  • Employee well-being is supported via hybrid work, short-term counseling through our EAP and a premium subscription to Headspace.
  • We embrace diversity across all dimensions and provide employees with 9 employee resource groups globally, including our WOMEN ERG.
  • Comprehensive parental leave policy as well as fertility treatment through healthcare providers with a $20,000 lifetime maximum.