TikTok · 14 hours ago
Research Scientist Intern (TikTok-Privacy Innovation Lab-Multimodal Generative Model) - 2026 Start (PhD)
San Jose, CA
Internship
Onsite
Intern
$60/hr - $60/hr
Start in 2026TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video, and they are seeking a Research Scientist Intern to contribute to the Privacy Innovation Lab. This role involves developing next-generation generative foundation models with a focus on privacy-sensitive environments and collaborating with teams to optimize model training and architecture.
Content CreatorsContent DiscoveryMedia and EntertainmentSocial MediaVideo
Responsibilities
You will participate in the architecture design and deep optimization of next-generation text-to-image and text-to-video models, including but not limited to:
Develop a deep understanding of and optimize DiT + Flow Matching / Rectified Flow–based generative models
Lead or contribute to the design and implementation of: Diffusion Transformer (DiT / MM-DiT) architecture improvements; Unified text-to-image / text-to-video model designs; Latent space, tokenization, and conditioning mechanisms
Perform joint algorithmic and system-level optimization, targeting: Training stability and convergence speed; Memory and compute efficiency; Generation quality and consistency
Address challenges in long-sequence, high-resolution, and video generation, including: Efficient attention and temporal modeling strategies; Long-context and long-latent modeling
Collaborate closely with systems and kernel engineers to map model designs to efficient implementations
Reproduce, analyze, and advance state-of-the-art generative models (beyond simple replication)
Qualification
Required
Currently pursuing PhD in Computer science, computer engineering, or a related technical discipline
Deep understanding of Diffusion / Flow Matching / Rectified Flow
Strong familiarity with DiT / Transformer-based architectures in generative modeling
Ability to debug the full pipeline from mathematical formulation → code → training → generated outputs
Proficiency with PyTorch and hands-on experience training large-scale models
Preferred
Practical experience with text-to-image or text-to-video models (non-toy systems)
Familiarity with multimodal modeling (Text / Image / Video / Audio)
Research publications or open-source contributions
Benefits
Day one access to health insurance
Life insurance
Wellbeing benefits
10 paid holidays per year
Paid sick time (56 hours if hired in first half of year, 40 if hired in second half of year)
Housing allowance
Company
TikTok
TikTok is a short-form video entertainment app and social network platform. It is a sub-organization of ByteDance.
Founded in 2003
10001+ employees
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)
Funding
Current Stage
Late StageLeadership Team
N Ali Mohamed
CEO
Blake Chandlee
VP Global Business Solutions
Recent News
2026-02-06
2026-02-06
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