E-commerce Recommendation Intern

Job Description

About Company

Founded in 2012, ByteDance’s core mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. The company offers a suite of more than a dozen products globally, including well-known platforms like TikTok, Lemon8, CapCut, and Pico. In the China market, its offerings include Toutiao, Douyin, and Xigua. ByteDance aims to make it easier and more enjoyable for people to connect with, consume, and create content.

The company fosters a culture of inspiring creativity, enabled by its global and diverse teams. ByteDancers are encouraged to lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make a significant impact within a rapidly growing tech environment. An “Always Day 1” mindset drives continuous iteration and meaningful breakthroughs for employees, the company, and its users. ByteDance is committed to creating an inclusive space where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives, reflecting the diverse communities its platforms reach globally.

Job Description

This opportunity is for a 2026 Summer Internship within ByteDance’s E-commerce Recommendation Team. The team is dedicated to building and scaling a robust recommendation system to deliver the best shopping experience for TikTok users.

Internship Overview:
• Purpose: To offer students industry exposure and hands-on experience, developing fundamental skills and exploring potential career paths. It provides a vibrant blend of social events and enriching development workshops.
• Duration: 12 weeks, full-time.
• Summer Start Dates (2026):
• May 11th, 2026
• May 18th, 2026
• May 26th, 2026
• June 8th, 2026
• June 22nd, 2026
• Application Process: Candidates can apply to a maximum of two positions globally across ByteDance and its affiliates. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, and early application is encouraged. Applicants must clearly state their availability (Start date, End date) in their resume.

Responsibilities:
As an intern in the E-commerce Recommendation Team, you will:
• Collaborate within a team to conduct cutting-edge research in machine learning algorithms, specifically focusing on retrieval and recommendation algorithms.
• Participate in the development of large-scale e-commerce recommendation algorithms and systems, designed to serve 10 million to 100 million users on TikTok. This includes recommendations for commodities, live streams, and short videos.
• Focus on building long-term and short-term user interest models, involving the analysis and extraction of relevant information from vast and diverse datasets, and designing algorithms to efficiently explore users’ latent interests.
• Apply machine learning algorithms to enhance various business scenarios, such as search ranking, natural language and video understanding, and trust and safety initiatives.

Minimum Qualifications:
Candidates for this internship must meet the following criteria:
• Currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Computer Science, a related technical field, or possess equivalent industrial research experience.
• Have experience (preferred) in one of the following domains: recommendation systems, online advertising, information retrieval, natural language processing, computer vision, machine learning, or large-scale data mining.
• Be familiar with at least one mainstream deep learning framework, such as TensorFlow or PyTorch.
• Demonstrate a strong passion for solving complex and challenging problems.
• Must obtain and maintain work authorization in the country of employment at the time of hire.
• Must be able to commit to a 12-week full-time work period during Summer 2026.

Compensation and Benefits:
• Hourly Rate: $42.75.
• Benefits: Interns receive day-one access to health insurance, life insurance, and wellbeing benefits. They also accrue 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 who are not working 100% remote may also be eligible for a housing allowance. Please note that benefits programs may be modified or changed by the Company at any time.

Additional Information:
• Privacy Policy: By submitting an application, candidates accept and agree to ByteDance’s global applicant privacy policy.
• Reasonable Accommodation: ByteDance is committed to providing reasonable accommodations in its recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, sincerely held religious beliefs, or other legally protected reasons.
• Los Angeles County Candidates: Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered in accordance with federal, state, and local laws, including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance. Criminal history may be considered to have a direct, adverse, and negative relationship on job duties involving interaction with clients/colleagues, handling confidential information, and exercising sound judgment.