Apply on Employer Site

TikTok · 2 weeks ago

Machine Learning Engineer Graduate (TikTok Short Video Content Understanding/Multimodal Recommendation) - 2026 Start (BS/MS)

San Jose, CA

Full-time

Onsite

New Grad

$119K/yr - $187K/yr

TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video, and they are seeking a Machine Learning Engineer Graduate to join their team in 2026. The role focuses on empowering content understanding for TikTok's short video business through the development of advanced algorithms and applications in multimodal recommendation systems.

Content CreatorsContent DiscoveryMedia and EntertainmentSocial MediaVideo

H1B Sponsor Likely

Responsibilities

Lead multimodal algorithm development for TikTok’s short-video business, explore applications of multimodal technologies in recommendation systems and other scenarios to improve key business metrics

Conduct cutting-edge research in multimodal and MLLM technologies, design advanced algorithms to solve business requirements while achieving technical breakthroughs

Drive engineering deployment and implementation, ensuring model stability, scalability, and efficiency in production environments

Focus on key areas including (but not limited to):

General AI platform design and development, including few-shot/zero-shot on MLLM, AI-labeling, auto prompting, active-learning, continue pretraining and RL

Integration of content understanding with recommendation systems (e.g., UGC ecosystems, cold start, interest exploration, comment understanding)

Leveraging multimodal techniques to develop next-generation recommendation systems, such as generative models and end-to-end approaches

Qualification

Multimodal content understandingLarge language models (LLMs)Deep learning frameworksContent understanding solutionsProactive mindsetOwnershipCommunicationCollaboration skills

Required

Proven experience in multimodal content understanding, with expertise in large language models (LLMs) and familiarity with cutting-edge progress in the field

Strong technical foundation in at least one major deep learning framework (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow)

Proactive mindset, strong sense of ownership, excellent communication skills, and ability to collaborate across teams

Preferred

Hands-on experience deploying content understanding solutions in search, advertising, recommendation, or related domains

Benefits

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

10 paid holidays per year

10 paid sick days per year

17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure)

Company

TikTok

Glassdoor3.4

TikTok is a short-form video entertainment app and social network platform. It is a sub-organization of ByteDance.

Founded in 2003

Los Angeles, California, USA

10001+ employees

https://www.tiktok.com

H1B Sponsorship

TikTok has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)

Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship

Represents job field similar to this job

Trends of Total Sponsorships

2025 (979)

2024 (601)

2023 (387)

2022 (322)

2021 (133)

2020 (72)