Research Scientist Intern

Responsibilities
TikTok Ads 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 excited to grow our advertisers' and users' 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 looking for talented individuals to join us for an internship in 2026. Internships at TikTok aim to offer students industry exposure and hands-on experience. Watch your ambitions become reality as your inspiration brings infinite opportunities at TikTok.

PhD internships at TikTok provide students with the opportunity to actively contribute to our products and research, and to the organization's future plans and emerging technologies. Our dynamic internship experience blends hands-on learning, enriching community-building and development events, and collaboration with industry experts.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis - we encourage you to apply early. Please state your availability clearly in your resume (Start date, End date).

Summer Start Dates:
May 11th, 2026

May 18th, 2026

May 26th, 2026

June 8th, 2026

June 22nd, 2026

Responsibilities:

• Lead research and development of advanced generative AI technologies, including LLMs, multimodal models (text/image/video), and deepfake detection/synthesis, focusing on optimizing performance across pre-training, SFT, RLHF, and AI safety.
• Design and deploy cutting-edge AIGC solutions for content understanding and monetization in diverse applications such as ads, e-commerce, short video, and live streaming, contributing to the creation of next-generation AI-driven ecosystems.
• Drive advancements in LLM-based agents using reinforcement learning to enable autonomous reasoning, planning, and interactive capabilities, addressing real-world challenges in dynamic environments.
• Innovate techniques to improve the efficiency of large-scale model training and inference, including distillation, quantization, and speculative decoding, for scalable and practical deployment in production.
• Collaborate with interdisciplinary teams to transition research breakthroughs into production-grade AI services, ensuring robust, low-latency, and cost-effective solutions.
• Stay at the forefront of generative AI research by contributing to patents, publications, and open-source projects, while actively monitoring and contributing to the latest industry trends and innovations.

Qualifications
Minimum Qualifications:

• Current Ph.D. student in Computer Science, AI, Machine Learning, or related fields by 2026 (or equivalent industry experience).
• Strong foundational experience in deep learning, NLP, and generative models (LLMs, diffusion models, etc.).
• Hands-on experience with large-scale model training, RLHF (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback), and multimodal learning (text, image, video).
• Proficiency in one or more deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow, with familiarity in distributed training frameworks.

Preferred Qualifications:

• A track record of publications or active research/paper review at top-tier conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, ACL, CVPR, etc.) or equivalent.
• Knowledge of AI safety, alignment, and adversarial robustness, with an interest in responsible AI development.
• Experience in developing agentic systems utilizing reinforcement learning.
• Strong engineering skills with the ability to deploy models at scale and optimize for performance.

By submitting an application for this role, you accept and agree to our global applicant privacy policy, which may be accessed here:

Job Information

【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Hourly) - Campus Intern

The hourly rate range for this position in the selected city is $45- $60.

Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Interns have day one access to health insurance, life insurance, wellbeing benefits and more. Interns also receive 10 paid holidays per year and paid sick time (56 hours if hired in first half of year, 40 if hired in second half of year). Interns who are not working 100% remote may also be eligible for housing allowance.

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:

• Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;
• Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and
• 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