Recommendation Algorithm Team Intern

Job Description

About the Company: TikTok

TikTok is a leading global destination for short-form mobile video, with a core mission to inspire creativity and bring joy. Headquartered in Los Angeles and Singapore, TikTok also maintains offices in major cities worldwide, including New York City, London, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo.

The company fosters a culture of innovation, collaboration, and impact, encouraging employees to embrace challenges as opportunities for learning and growth. They strive to do great things with great people, leading with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make a significant impact in a rapidly growing tech environment. TikTok emphasizes an “Always Day 1” mindset, constantly iterating to achieve meaningful breakthroughs for its users and the company.

TikTok is deeply committed to Diversity & Inclusion, aiming to create an inclusive space where employees are valued for their diverse skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. Their workplace is designed to reflect the global communities they reach through their platform, celebrating diverse voices to achieve their mission of inspiring creativity and bringing joy. The company also provides reasonable accommodations in its recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, sincerely held religious beliefs, or other reasons protected by applicable laws.

Interns at TikTok receive a range of benefits, including day-one access to health insurance, life insurance, and wellbeing benefits. They also receive 10 paid holidays per year and paid sick time (56 hours if hired in the first half of the year, 40 hours if hired in the second half). Interns not working 100% remotely may also be eligible for a housing allowance.

For candidates in Los Angeles County (unincorporated), TikTok adheres to the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act, considering qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records for employment.

About the Job: Recommendation Algorithm Team Internship (2026)

This internship position is within TikTok’s Recommendation Algorithm Team, which plays a central and critical role in the company. This team drives key product decisions and contributes significantly to platform growth by supporting and innovating on production recommendation models and directly impacting product outcomes. It is described as a fast-paced, collaborative, and impact-driven environment. The team comprises machine learning researchers and engineers.

The internship program aims to provide students with valuable industry exposure and hands-on experience, allowing them to turn their ambitions into reality. It is a full-time internship for 2026, requiring a commitment of at least 12 weeks. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, and early application is encouraged.

Responsibilities:

The intern will be involved in:
• Conducting development and research focused on cutting-edge technologies, including Computer Vision (CV), Natural Language Processing (NLP), multi-modality, Large Language Models (LLMs), and generative modeling.
• Following the State-of-the-Art (SoTA) progress in relevant fields and effectively transforming these advanced ideas into production-ready solutions.
• Engaging in life-cycle model development, which encompasses all stages from model training and deployment to ongoing maintenance and its application in real-world business scenarios.

Qualifications:

Minimum Qualifications:
• Currently pursuing a PhD Degree.
• Demonstrated experience in one or more areas of computer vision, natural language processing, and machine learning.
• Solid knowledge and practical experience with at least one major deep learning framework (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, MXNet).
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, coupled with the ability to collaborate effectively within cross-functional teams.

Preferred Qualifications:
• A degree in computer science, electrical engineering, or closely related fields.
• A graduation date of December 2025 onwards, with the intent to return to their degree program after the completion of the internship.
• Authorship of publications in top-tier academic venues such as SIGGRAPH, SIGGRAPH Asia, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ICML, NeurIPS, or ICLR.

Job Information & Compensation:
The hourly compensation for this Campus Intern position is $60.00.