Machine Learning Engineer (Data-Search-TikTok.US) - 2026 Start (PhD)

About the team
On the TikTok Search Team, you will have the opportunity to develop and apply cutting edge machine learning technologies in real-time large-scale systems, which serve billions of search requests every day. Via advanced NLP and multi-modal models, our projects impact and improve the search experience for hundreds of millions of users globally. We are also exploring how to leverage LLM to further enhance TikTok users search experience, potentially sharping the search engine for the next generation. We embrace a culture of self-direction, intellectual curiosity, openness, and problem-solving.

Responsibilities:
Participate in the improvement of the search core algorithm, possible directions include:
• Content understanding: Applying the industry's cutting-edge NLP and CV technology and leveraging LLM to match the most relevant videos for each search query, and continuously improve the relevance of TikTok search.
• User Behavior Modeling: solving the recommendation problem in search, let TikTok search increase the ability of personalization on the basis of "relevant", and understand users better.
• Video understanding: comprehensive use of NLP, CV, as well as LLM for better video understanding from the perspective of the video itself and social network, improve authority, credibility, and usefulness of search results.