Software Engineer Intern (Recommendations and Search) - 2027 Summer

About the team

The Tech and Product team of TikTok USDS is missioned to empower TikTok US users to have a great user experience with strong data security and privacy protections, focusing on compliance, reliability, business and product support, and efficiency improvement.

As part of this team, you will build and scale high-impact Machine Learning solutions—including recommendation engines, search relevance, and e-commerce systems—designed specifically to deliver personalized, high-performing experiences while ensuring world-class data governance, privacy compliance, and system security for US users.

We are looking for talented individuals to join us for an internship. Our internship program offers students hands-on experience, industry exposure, and opportunities to apply their knowledge to real-world challenges while building a strong foundation for personal and professional growth.

Interns will gain practical experience, explore potential career paths, and participate in social events, learning programs, and development workshops alongside industry professionals.

Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, so we encourage you to apply early. Please clearly state your availability in your resume, including your start and end dates.

Responsibilities

• Optimize the searching quality to provide TikTok's users the best recommendations and search experience
• Combine your understanding of product objectives and take full advantage of modern machine learning and information retrieval techniques to improve recommendations/search quality and perception
• Build the core systems and algorithms development including query understanding, result ranking, query recommendation, system reliability, and etc.

Minimum Qualifications

• Currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• Able to commit to a 12-week internship during Summer 2027.
• Experience in developing and implementing large-scale consumer-facing services/products and/or building backend services for large-scale consumer-facing applications
• Proficiency in the following languages but not limited to: C/C++, Python, Java or Golang
• Effective team communication and collaboration skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Currently pursuing a Master's degree degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• Working knowledge in one of the following or similar domains: search, recommendation, ranking, ads, etc.
• Working knowledge in one of the following areas: machine learning, deep learning, backend, large-scale systems, data science, full-stack
• Experience with Big Data Frameworks, such as hadoop, spark, flink, etc.