Machine Learning Engineer Graduate; TikTok E-Commerce - Conversational AI PhD

Machine Learning Engineer Graduate (Tik Tok E-Commerce - Conversational AI)-2026 Start (PhD)

Location:

Seattle

Team:
Technology

Employment Type:

Regular

Job Code: A72051

Team Introduction:
Our team is responsible for developing next-generation chatbot and machine translation solutions to improve the Tik Tok Shopping experience across the world. We are currently looking for talented engineers that have a deep understanding of natural language processing and machine learning, especially ones with solid skills and experience of large language models, machine translation, and conversational AI. We are looking for talented individuals to join our team in 2026.

As a graduate, you will get unparalleled opportunities to kickstart your career, pursue bold ideas and explore limitless growth opportunities. Successful candidates must be able to commit to an onboarding date by end of year 2026. Please state your availability and graduation date clearly in your resume. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis – we encourage you to apply early.

• Develop and optimize the intelligent customer service of Tik Tok shopping. Work closely with product and operation teams to understand user intentions, design solutions of experience excellence, and convey these solutions conversationally with the support of cutting‑edge LLM technology. Build NLP models (text classification, machine reading, summarization) and prediction models (question prediction, chatbot action prediction) to achieve these goals.
• Develop and optimize the machine translation service of Tik Tok shopping to better support cross‑region product listing, buyer‑seller communication, and commenting. Build machine translation models for conversational environments and text generation models from multi‑modality inputs.
• Develop and optimize the multi‑modal AIGC model for product copywriting, including product title, selling points, description, and live broadcast script creation. Apply cutting‑edge AIGC models to save human effort and improve business performance.

• Currently pursuing a PhD degree with majors in computer science, computer engineering, statistics, applied mathematics, data science, or other related disciplines.
• Experience with large language models, natural language generation, machine translation, question answering, machine reading, information extraction, text mining, and classification.
• Work experience in e‑commerce or the Internet industry is preferred.
• Practical experience in NLP (dialogue systems, machine translation, NLP‑related projects in IR/Ads systems, etc.) is preferred.
• Familiarity with at least one programming language, including but not limited to Go, Python, or Java.
• Experience in big‑data development (Hive, Spark, etc.).
• Published high‑quality papers in venues such as ACL, EMNLP, COLING, AAAI, IEEE TASLP, etc. are preferred.

We cover 100% premium coverage for employee medical insurance, approximately 75% premium coverage for dependents, and offer a Health Savings Account (HSA) with a company match. Additional benefits include dental, vision, short‑term and long‑term disability, basic life, voluntary life, AD&D insurance, and flexible spending account options. Paid time off includes 10 paid holidays, 17 days of paid personal time off (PPTO, prorated upon hire), 10 paid sick days, 12 weeks of paid parental leave, and 8 weeks of paid supplemental disability.

We also provide mental and emotional health benefits through our EAP and Lyra, a 401(k) company match, gym and cellphone service reimbursements. The company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.

The base salary range for this position in Seattle is $129,960 – $246,240 annually. Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on factors such as qualifications, skills, competencies, and experience. Base pay is one part of the total package, which may also include discretionary bonuses/incentives and restricted stock units.

For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) candidates, qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be…