PhD Intern – Machine Learning, Ads Monetization

Job Description

Research Scientist Intern (Monetization Technology) – 2026 Start (PhD) | TikTok

The Tone:
This is a PhD internship at TikTok, with opportunities in various global locations, including primary hubs like Los Angeles. TikTok builds next-generation monetization platforms to help millions of customers grow their businesses using products like TikTok. This role is crucial for developing advanced advertising systems and contributing to the company’s future plans and emerging technologies through hands-on product and research contributions.

The TL;DR
• Role: Internship
• Type: Temporary
• Location: Flexible (various global offices including Los Angeles)
• Pay: $60 hourly
• Team: Part of the General Hire process for Monetization Technology teams.
• Mission: Develop state-of-the-art applied machine learning projects for a large-scale Ads system to grow businesses.

What You’ll Actually Do
• System Development: Participate in the development of a large-scale Ads system.
• Machine Learning: Be responsible for the development of state-of-the-art applied machine learning projects.
• Ownership: Own key targeting components or strategies within the TikTok ads monetization ecosystem.
• Collaboration: Work with product and business teams to shape product vision.

The Must-Haves
• Background: Currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science, engineering, or a quantitative field.
• Experience: No explicit years of experience required beyond pursuing a PhD.
• Skills: Strong publications record in top conferences or journals (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, etc).
• Bonus: Hands-on experience developing multimodality foundation models and work or internship experience in an AI research organization.