Machine Learning Engineer Intern (Privacy and Data Protection Office) - 2025 Project Intern (PhD)

About the team
PDPO(Privacy and Data Protection Office) is the organization to lead, supervise, and empower all TikTok's privacy work in an accountable and industry leading way. This team is the expert in the landscape of privacy risks and passionate about consulting across the company on implementing the proper safeguards and technical mitigations to ensure that our users’ privacy is honored across the TikTok's products and platforms.

We are looking for talented individuals to join us for an internship in 2025. Internships at TikTok aim to offer students industry exposure and hands-on experience. Turn your ambitions into reality as your inspiration brings infinite opportunities at TikTok.

Internships at TikTok aim to provide students with hands-on experience in developing fundamental skills and exploring potential career paths. A vibrant blend of social events and enriching development workshops will be available for you to explore. Here, you will utilize your knowledge in real-world scenarios while laying a strong foundation for personal and professional growth.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis - we encourage you to apply early.
Successful candidates must be able to commit to at least 12-week long internship period.

About the role
The Machine Learning Engineer Intern will lead and collaborate with cross-functional teams to design, develop, and deploy sophisticated machine learning algorithms to enhance the performance of our business systems.
- Formulate end-to-end machine learning models by utilizing ML, NLP techniques to deal with real-world signals generated from privacy products/ incidents/ review areas.
- Analyze extensive, complex datasets to extract meaningful insights, identify opportunities for improvement, and facilitate data-driven decision-making.
- Design and execute experiments, testing and iterating on machine learning models to optimize recommendation functions and boost user satisfaction.
- Communicate final recommendations and drive decision making.

You will utilize data-driven techniques in building solutions to help measure, validate, identify, and envision TikTok's privacy evolution. You will design and scope out projects, build operationalized analytics tools and platforms, and most importantly, use data and AI models to find insights, diagnose problems and tell compelling stories.
Besides the technical side, you will also get the opportunity to work closely with various XFN teams, including but not limited to engineering, legal, audit, security, public, government relations, and products. You will be expected to build deep domain knowledge and build a strong domain expertise in privacy.