Software Engineer Graduate (TikTok Search Data Infra) - 2027 Start
Aug 20, 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
About the Team
Our Search Engineering Team builds and owns TikTok's search engine, combining information retrieval with modern machine learning from NLP, CV, and recommender systems. We embrace a culture of self-direction, intellectual curiosity, openness, and problem-solving.
The Data Infrastructure team owns the data layer: how billions of videos and articles are ingested and indexed, how features are computed and served, how petabytes of user actions and features become training data, and how long sequences are modeled. Every retrieval and ranking model in TikTok Search runs on data our systems produce.
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.
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 our Company and its affiliates' jobs globally. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis - we encourage you to apply early.
Responsibilities
- Build and own query/video pipelines - ingestion, enrichment, and streaming/batch index construction at billion-doc scale with near-real-time freshness.
- Develop the feature engineering platform: computation, backfill, storage, and serving, with strong online/offline consistency guarantees.
- Build streaming and batch sample pipelines that turn user actions and features into high-quality training data.
- Improve data quality, observability, and cost efficiency across PB-scale storage and compute.
Qualifications
Minimum Qualification(s)
- Currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline.
- Strong programming skills in Java, C++, or Python.
- Production experience with data frameworks such as Spark, Flink, or Hive/Iceberg.
- Solid distributed systems fundamentals, and the ability to debug and optimize complex systems in production.
Preferred Qualification(s)
- Currently pursuing a Master's degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline.
- Experience with search, recommendation, or ads data infrastructure.
- Experience with feature stores and training sample pipelines.
- Familiarity with real-time indexing, inverted index, or embedding/vector retrieval pipelines.
- Experience using AI coding assistants and agents to improve day-to-day development productivity.
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.
About the Team
Our Search Engineering Team builds and owns TikTok's search engine, combining information retrieval with modern machine learning from NLP, CV, and recommender systems. We embrace a culture of self-direction, intellectual curiosity, openness, and problem-solving.
The Data Infrastructure team owns the data layer: how billions of videos and articles are ingested and indexed, how features are computed and served, how petabytes of user actions and features become training data, and how long sequences are modeled. Every retrieval and ranking model in TikTok Search runs on data our systems produce.
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.
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 our Company and its affiliates' jobs globally. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis - we encourage you to apply early.
Responsibilities
- Build and own query/video pipelines - ingestion, enrichment, and streaming/batch index construction at billion-doc scale with near-real-time freshness.
- Develop the feature engineering platform: computation, backfill, storage, and serving, with strong online/offline consistency guarantees.
- Build streaming and batch sample pipelines that turn user actions and features into high-quality training data.
- Improve data quality, observability, and cost efficiency across PB-scale storage and compute.
Minimum Qualification(s)
- Currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline.
- Strong programming skills in Java, C++, or Python.
- Production experience with data frameworks such as Spark, Flink, or Hive/Iceberg.
- Solid distributed systems fundamentals, and the ability to debug and optimize complex systems in production.
Preferred Qualification(s)
- Currently pursuing a Master's degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline.
- Experience with search, recommendation, or ads data infrastructure.
- Experience with feature stores and training sample pipelines.
- Familiarity with real-time indexing, inverted index, or embedding/vector retrieval pipelines.
- Experience using AI coding assistants and agents to improve day-to-day development productivity.
About the Team
Our Search Engineering Team builds and owns TikTok's search engine, combining information retrieval with modern machine learning from NLP, CV, and recommender systems. We embrace a culture of self-direction, intellectual curiosity, openness, and problem-solving.
The Data Infrastructure team owns the data layer: how billions of videos and articles are ingested and indexed, how features are computed and served, how petabytes of user actions and features become training data, and how long sequences are modeled. Every retrieval and ranking model in TikTok Search runs on data our systems produce.
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.
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 our Company and its affiliates' jobs globally. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis - we encourage you to apply early.
Responsibilities
- Build and own query/video pipelines - ingestion, enrichment, and streaming/batch index construction at billion-doc scale with near-real-time freshness.
- Develop the feature engineering platform: computation, backfill, storage, and serving, with strong online/offline consistency guarantees.
- Build streaming and batch sample pipelines that turn user actions and features into high-quality training data.
- Improve data quality, observability, and cost efficiency across PB-scale storage and compute.
Qualifications
Minimum Qualification(s)
- Currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline.
- Strong programming skills in Java, C++, or Python.
- Production experience with data frameworks such as Spark, Flink, or Hive/Iceberg.
- Solid distributed systems fundamentals, and the ability to debug and optimize complex systems in production.
Preferred Qualification(s)
- Currently pursuing a Master's degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline.
- Experience with search, recommendation, or ads data infrastructure.
- Experience with feature stores and training sample pipelines.
- Familiarity with real-time indexing, inverted index, or embedding/vector retrieval pipelines.
- Experience using AI coding assistants and agents to improve day-to-day development productivity.
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
ResponsibilitiesAbout the Team
Our Search Engineering Team builds and owns TikTok's search engine, combining information retrieval with modern machine learning from NLP, CV, and recommender systems. We embrace a culture of self-direction, intellectual curiosity, openness, and problem-solving.
The Data Infrastructure team owns the data layer: how billions of videos and articles are ingested and indexed, how features are computed and served, how petabytes of user actions and features become training data, and how long sequences are modeled. Every retrieval and ranking model in TikTok Search runs on data our systems produce.
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.
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 our Company and its affiliates' jobs globally. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis - we encourage you to apply early.
Responsibilities
- Build and own query/video pipelines - ingestion, enrichment, and streaming/batch index construction at billion-doc scale with near-real-time freshness.
- Develop the feature engineering platform: computation, backfill, storage, and serving, with strong online/offline consistency guarantees.
- Build streaming and batch sample pipelines that turn user actions and features into high-quality training data.
- Improve data quality, observability, and cost efficiency across PB-scale storage and compute.
Qualifications
QualificationsMinimum Qualification(s)
- Currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline.
- Strong programming skills in Java, C++, or Python.
- Production experience with data frameworks such as Spark, Flink, or Hive/Iceberg.
- Solid distributed systems fundamentals, and the ability to debug and optimize complex systems in production.
Preferred Qualification(s)
- Currently pursuing a Master's degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline.
- Experience with search, recommendation, or ads data infrastructure.
- Experience with feature stores and training sample pipelines.
- Familiarity with real-time indexing, inverted index, or embedding/vector retrieval pipelines.
- Experience using AI coding assistants and agents to improve day-to-day development productivity.
Additional Information
- Salary: $128,000 – $316,800
- Posted: Aug 20, 2026