Software Engineer Intern – Machine Learning, Search Ads

Job Description

Machine Learning Engineer Intern (Search Ads) – 2026 Fall (BS/MS) | TikTok

The Tone:
This is a 12-week full-time internship at TikTok, with potential placement in Los Angeles or another selected city. TikTok is a global leader in short-form mobile video, dedicated to inspiring creativity and bringing joy to its users. In this role, you will contribute to the Search Ads team, which is vital for monetizing TikTok’s apps by developing a globally leading Search Ads system and working on complex machine learning, NLP, and ranking problems. This internship offers hands-on experience and industry exposure within a growing technology company.

The TL;DR
• Role: Internship
• Type: Full-time (12 weeks)
• Location: Location varies by selected city; potential for Los Angeles
• Pay: $45–$60 hourly
• Team: Search Ads team, within the Global Monetization Product and Technology organization
• Mission: This person builds and optimizes a globally leading Search Ads monetization system for TikTok and other applications, focusing on machine learning and algorithm development.
• Tech Stack: Tensorflow, PyTorch, MXNet, Go, C/C++, Python

What You’ll Actually Do
• Develop: Participate in the creation of large-scale Ads systems.
• Optimize: Improve relevance models and strategies, including semantic matching, active learning, multi-modal models (text/photo/video), and ranking.
• Iterate: Contribute to the development and refinement of Ads algorithms using machine learning.
• Improve: Enhance Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities and query understanding, covering query classification, seq2seq, Named Entity Recognition (NER), knowledge graphs, and bidword optimization.
• Enhance: Increase CTR/CVR model estimation accuracy through data analysis, modeling, and feature engineering.

The Must-Haves
• Background: Currently pursuing an Undergraduate or Master’s degree in Software Development, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline, with a strong theoretical understanding of machine learning concepts and techniques.
• Experience: Demonstrated excellence in programming, debugging, and optimization across various general-purpose programming languages.
• Skills: Proficiency in Go, C/C++, or Python; experience with machine learning frameworks like Tensorflow, PyTorch, or MXNet; ability to think critically and formulate clear problem solutions.
• Bonus: Familiarity with Ads systems, recommendation engines, search technologies, or ranking algorithms.