Machine Learning Engineer Graduate (Global E-commerce Recommendation/Search) - 2026 Start (PhD)[...]

Location: San Jose

Employment Type: Regular

Job Code: A02740

Applicants must be able to commit to an onboarding date by the end of the year 2026.

Responsibilities

• Work in a team to conduct cutting‑edge research in machine learning algorithms, such as retrieval and recommendation algorithms.
• Participate in building large‑scale (10 million to 100 million) e‑commerce recommendation algorithms and systems, including commodity recommendations, live‑stream recommendations, short video recommendations, etc. in TikTok.
• Build long‑ and short‑term user‑interest models, analyze and extract relevant information from large amounts of various data, and design algorithms to explore users' latent interests efficiently.
• Apply machine learning algorithms to improve the different business scenarios, such as search ranking, natural language and video understanding, and trust and safety.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• Individuals who are completing or have recently completed a PhD degree in Software Development, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• Excellent analytical and problem‑solving skills.
• Strong foundation in machine learning and deep learning, with experience in NLP (Natural Language Processing) and personalization.
• Exceptional coding skills with solid knowledge of data structures and algorithms.
• Proficiency in Linux development environments.

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior experience in search, recommendation, or advertisement algorithms.
• Familiarity with e‑commerce businesses.

Job Information

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $156,000 - $316,800 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

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).

Legal and EEO Statement

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.