Technology

Research Engineer - Foundation Models, Ads Integrity

Location

San Jose

Employment Type

Regular

Job Code

A143589

Responsibilities

Our Business Integrity team has a strong user focus and a dedication to technical excellence. We aim to meet our users’ needs with reliable and high-performing platforms and services. We are looking for strong machine learning engineers who are excited to grow their business understanding, build highly scalable machine learning models, and partner across disciplines with global teams, in pursuit of excellence. Given the fast growth of TikTok in the world, we are working on building a next-generation content understanding system for TikTok monetization. We are seeking Research Engineers who are experienced in machine learning, which can help us create an ecosystem that rewards high quality user experience and advertiser value.

Why Join Us?

1. Work on cutting-edge AI research with real-world impact in a fast-growing tech ecosystem.

2. Collaborate with world-class researchers and engineers to push the boundaries of generative AI.

3. Competitive compensation, flexible work culture, and opportunities for rapid career growth.

Responsibilities

1. Research and develop cutting-edge generative AI technologies, including LLMs, multimodal models (text/image/video), and deepfake detection/synthesis, optimizing performance across pre-training, SFT, RLHF, and AI safety.

2. Design and deploy AIGC solutions for content understanding and monetization in ads, e-commerce, short video, and live streaming, building next-gen AI-driven ecosystems.

3. Advance LLM-based agents with reinforcement learning, enabling autonomous reasoning, planning, and interactive capabilities for real-world applications.

4. Improve efficiency of large-scale model training and inference, exploring techniques like distillation, quantization, and speculative decoding for scalable deployment.

5. Collaborate cross-functionally to productionized research breakthroughs, ensuring robustness, low-latency, and cost-effective AI services.

6. Stay ahead of industry trends, contributing to patents, publications, and open-source projects in generative AI.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

MS or PhD in Computer Science, AI, Machine Learning, or related fields (or equivalent industry experience)
Solid transferrable experience in deep learning, NLP, and generative models (LLMs, diffusion models, etc.)
Hands-on experience with large-scale model training, RLHF, and multimodal learning
Proficiency in PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow, and familiarity with distributed training frameworks

Preferred Qualifications

Publications at top-tier conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, ACL, CVPR, etc.) are a plus
Knowledge of AI safety, alignment, and adversarial robustness
Experience in building agentic systems with reinforcement learning.
Strong engineering skills for deploying models at scale.

Job Information

【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Annually)

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $136800 - $259200 annually.

Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units.

Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others. Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure).

The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.

For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates:

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:

1. Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;

2. Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and

3. Exercising sound judgment.

About TikTok

TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. At TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. TikTok's global headquarters are in Los Angeles and Singapore, and we also have offices in New York City, London, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo.

Why Join Us

Inspiring creativity is at the core of TikTok's mission. Our innovative product is built to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect – and our global, diverse teams make that possible. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and bring joy - a mission we work towards every day.

We strive to do great things with great people. We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. Every challenge is an opportunity to learn and innovate as one team. We're resilient and embrace challenges as they come. By constantly iterating and fostering an "Always Day 1" mindset, we achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our company, and our users. When we create and grow together, the possibilities are limitless. Join us.

Diversity & Inclusion

TikTok is committed to creating an inclusive space where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. Our platform connects people from across the globe and so does our workplace. At TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. To achieve that goal, we are committed to celebrating our diverse voices and to creating an environment that reflects the many communities we reach. We are passionate about this and hope you are too.

TikTok Accommodation

TikTok is committed to providing reasonable accommodations in our recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, sincerely held religious beliefs or other reasons protected by applicable laws. If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at

https://tinyurl.com/RA-request

Research Engineer - Foundation Models, Ads Integrity

Job Type