Machine Learning Engineer Graduate (E-Commerce Recommendation Foundation) - 2027 Start San Jose

Discover a career that energizes and excites you every day.

@2026 Tik Tok

Technology

Location:

San Jose

Employment Type:

Regular

Job Code:

A86246

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• Participate in the full training lifecycle of Recommendation Foundation Models, including pre-training, mid-training, and post-training.
• Design and train multimodal semantic tokenizers for recommendation items, leveraging multimodal foundation models to encode rich item content into discrete semantic tokens and raise the performance ceiling of Recommendation Foundation Models.
• Develop LLM-native recommendation by incorporating recommendation tasks directly into large language model training and leveraging world knowledge to improve recommendation quality.
• Build the next generation of recommendation systems powered by Recommendation Foundation Models, spanning retrieval, ranking, and end-to-end generative recommendation.

• Individuals who are completing or have recently completed a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics or a related discipline.
• Solid foundation in machine learning and deep learning, with strong interest in LLMs and generative recommendation.
• Proficiency in Python and experience with deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch.
• Self-driven, with a strong research mindset and solid engineering skills.

• Experience with pre-training, mid-training, or post-training of LLMs or Foundation Models.
• Research or project experience in generative recommendation, LLM-native recommendation, or multimodal semantic tokenization.
• Publications on LLM-related topics at top-tier machine learning or natural language processing conferences, such as NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP, or NAACL, or strong achievements in major technical competitions.

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.

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;

3. Exercising sound judgment.

Tik Tok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. At Tik Tok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. Tik Tok's global headquarters are in Los Angeles and Singapore, and we also have offices in New York City, London, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo.

Inspiring creativity is at the core of Tik Tok's mission. Our innovative product is built to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect – and our global, diverse teams make that possible. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and bring joy - a mission we work towards every day.

We strive to do great things with great people. We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly…