Research Scientist Graduate (TikTok Recommendation-E-commerce, LLM & Generative Recommendation) - 2026 Start (PhD)

TikTok E-commerce is committed to building a global commerce ecosystem where content and commerce are deeply integrated, delivering a next-generation shopping experience to users. Our Recommendation team plays a critical role in enabling personalized and engaging user journeys by leveraging cutting-edge machine learning technologies.

In today’s content-driven commerce landscape, traditional collaborative filtering and supervised learning methods are no longer sufficient. We’re actively exploring how large language models (LLMs) and generative AI can fundamentally transform the recommendation process: from retrieval to ranking, and from static listings to dynamic, generative user-item interactions.

We are looking for talented individuals to join our team in 2026. As a graduate, you will get unparalleled opportunities for you to kickstart your career, pursue bold ideas and explore limitless growth opportunities. Co-create a future driven by your inspiration with TikTok.

Successful candidates must be able to commit to an onboarding date by end of year 2026

We will prioritize candidates who are able to commit to these start dates. Please state your availability and graduation date clearly in your resume.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. We encourage you to apply early.

Responsibilities
- Design algorithms and systems that leverage LLMs and generative models for content-to-commerce matching, product summarization, etc
- Explore novel architectures and strategies for generative recommendation systems
- Contribute to the research community via internal papers, patents, or external publications
- Drive scientific rigor while balancing real-world constraints