Machine Learning Engineer Intern; Data-Search- Recommendation - Summer; BS​/MS

Location

San Jose

Intern

Team Introduction Our Search Engineering Team is responsible for building and owning Tik Tok's search engine which can provide our users with the best search experience. In Tik Tok Search Team, you’ll have the opportunity to build full‑stack search engine system and combine information retrieval technology with modern machine learning methods from related fields such as NLP, CV, and recommender system.

We embrace a culture of self‑direction, intellectual curiosity, openness, and problem‑solving. We are looking for talented individuals to join us for an internship in 2026.

This internship provides students the opportunity to join one of our engineering teams where you will have the opportunity to:

• Participate in the improvement of the search core algorithm, possible directions include:
• Content understanding: applying the industry's cutting‑edge NLP and CV technology and leveraging LLM to match the most relevant videos for each search query, and continuously improve the relevance of Tik Tok search.
• User Behavior Modeling: solving the recommendation problem in search, let Tik Tok search increase the ability of personalization on the basis of "relevant", and understand users better.
• Video understanding: comprehensive use of NLP, CV, as well as LLM for better video understanding from the perspective of the video itself and social network, improve authority, credibility, and usefulness of search results.

• May 11th, 2026
• May 18th, 2026
• May 26th, 2026
• June 8th, 2026
• June 22nd, 2026

• Must be able to commit to a 12‑week full‑time work period during Summer 2026.
• Currently pursuing a Bachelor's or Master's in Software Development, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• Proficient coding skills and strong algorithm & data structure basis.
• Effective communication and teamwork skills.
• Experience in one or more of the following areas: NLP, Ranking, Ads, search engine, recommender system, distributed system, and machine learning.

• Demonstrated software engineering experience from previous internship, work experience, coding competitions, or publications.
• High levels of creativity and quick problem‑solving capabilities.

The hourly rate range for this position in the selected city is $45–$60. Interns have day one access to health insurance, life insurance, wellbeing benefits and more. Interns also receive 10 paid holidays per year and paid sick time (56 hours if hired in first half of year, 40 if hired in second half of year). Interns who are not working 100% remote may also be eligible for housing allowance.

The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.

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