PhD Intern – Machine Learning

Job Description

Machine Learning Engineer Intern (E-Commerce Recommendation/Search Alliance) – 2026 Start (PhD) | ByteDance

The Tone:
This is a PhD internship for a 2026 start at ByteDance. ByteDance, founded in 2012, is a global technology company with a mission to inspire creativity and enrich life through a suite of products, including TikTok, Lemon8, CapCut, Toutiao, Douyin, and Xigua. The E-commerce Alliance team focuses on improving merchants’ business indicators and creators’ creative efficiency within the e-commerce platform. This role is crucial for enhancing recommendation systems and search functionalities, providing high-quality content and a personalized shopping experience for TikTok users, and creating efficient shopping tools for sellers. Interns actively contribute to product development, research, and the organization’s future plans and emerging technologies, blending hands-on learning with collaboration with industry experts.

The TL;DR
• Role: Internship
• Type: Temporary
• Pay: $57 hourly
• Team: E-commerce Alliance team
• Mission: To enhance recommendation systems for e-commerce, serving merchants, creators, and TikTok users with high-quality content and a personalized shopping experience.

What You’ll Actually Do
• Algorithms: Design and implement machine learning algorithms to enhance recommendation systems.
• Data Analysis: Apply machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision techniques to analyze e-commerce data and interactions.
• Model Deployment: Deploy and maintain scalable recommendation models for real-time query handling and product suggestions.
• Strategic Insights: Analyze complex datasets to derive insights that guide strategic decisions.
• Research Integration: Stay up-to-date with machine learning developments, incorporating them into your work.

The Must-Haves
• Background: Doctorate Degree. Candidates must currently be pursuing a PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, Operations Research, or other related technical fields. This role is designed to provide students with opportunities to contribute to cutting-edge research and product development.
• Experience: Demonstrated profound knowledge in machine learning, statistics, and big data engineering is essential. Strong grasp of data structures, algorithms, and top-notch problem-solving skills are also required. Interns will apply these skills to analyze e-commerce data and interactions.
• Skills: Strong capabilities in data structures, algorithms, and problem-solving are mandatory. Expertise in machine learning, statistics, and big data engineering is also critical for success in this role, including applying techniques from natural language processing and computer vision.
• Bonus: Preferred candidates are in their final year of their PhD or recent graduates with a background in Software Development, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline. A deep understanding of scaling distributed computing, in addition to machine learning, statistics, and big data engineering, is a plus.