Software Engineering Intern – Ads Machine Learning

Job Description

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

The Tone:
This is an internship at TikTok, with the Brand Ads Team, located in Los Angeles, CA. TikTok is a leading global platform for short-form mobile video, committed to inspiring creativity and bringing joy to its users worldwide. The Brand Ads Team is central to this mission, developing technologies that unlock business growth potential by owning diverse ad products such as reservation, auction, and innovative content ads. These products help advertisers foster brand awareness and achieve their business objectives across the end-to-end ads delivery tech stack, including bidding, ranking, and forecasting. This internship offers students significant industry exposure and hands-on experience, providing an opportunity to apply their academic knowledge to real-world scenarios and build a strong foundation for future personal and professional growth.

The TL;DR
• Role: Internship
• Type: Temporary (12-week internship)
• Location: In-person, Los Angeles, CA
• Pay: $45 hourly
• Team: Brand Ads Team
• Mission: Drive engagement and revenue through the creation of innovative monetization products.
• Tech Stack: Go, C/C++, Python, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, NLP, CV, ranking systems, recommendation systems, large-scale systems

What You’ll Actually Do
• Monetization: Create innovative monetization products that increase engagement and revenue.
• System Development: Participate in the development of a large-scale advertising system.
• Algorithm Iteration: Develop and iterate on advertising algorithms using Machine Learning techniques.
• Content Understanding: Apply NLP and CV related technologies for content understanding and taxonomy.
• Organizational Impact: Contribute to the rapid growth and evolution of the organization with speed and quality.

The Must-Haves
• Background: Currently pursuing a Bachelor’s (BS) or Master’s (MS) degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or other relevant technical majors.
• Experience: Professional experience related to machine learning, data mining, data analysis, or distributed systems. Candidates must be able to commit to a 12-week onsite work period starting within 2026.
• Skills: Excellent programming, debugging, and optimization abilities in general-purpose languages such as Go, C/C++, or Python. A strong capacity to think critically and to clearly formulate solutions for complex problems is essential.
• Bonus: A good understanding of specific domains like brand ads, content ads, auction mechanics, bidding strategies, ranking systems, or ads forecasting. Experience with areas such as Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP), ranking systems, recommendation systems, backend development, large-scale systems, data science, or full-stack development is also beneficial. Demonstrating good product sense and prior experience in designing and implementing product features is a plus.