Senior Research Engineer, TikTok AI Search (LLM Pretraining / Alignment / Inference)

Responsibilities

About the team On the TikTok Search Team, you will have the opportunity to develop and apply cutting edge machine learning technologies in real-time large-scale systems, which serve billions of search requests every day. Via advanced NLP and multi-modal models, our projects impact and improve the search experience for hundreds of millions of users globally. We embrace a culture of self-direction, intellectual curiosity, openness, and problem-solving. The main job directions include : 1. Exploring and developing large-scale language models and optimizing enterprise applications to the extreme; 2. Data construction, instruction tuning, preference alignment, and model optimization; 3. Implementation of relevant applications, including content generation, summary etc.; 4. Collaborating with cross-functional teams to produce and apply new science to more responsibly develop and deploy large language models 5. In-depth research and exploration of more usage scenarios in future life. Responsibilities : - Conduct research and develop state-of-the-art algorithms in various stages of the development of LLM, including continued pretraining, SFT, RLHF; - Investigate and implement robust evaluation methodologies to assess model performance at various stages, unravel the underlying mechanisms and sources of their abilities, and utilize this understanding to drive model improvements. - Using inference stage techniques such as RAG, CoT, Prompt Engineering to improve the model output - Improve the performance of AI Search in the TikTok app to provide better search experience for users

Qualifications

Minimum qualifications :

• Bachelor or advanced degree in computer science or a related technical discipline.
• Effective communication and teamwork skills.
• Proficient coding skills and strong algorithm & data structure basis. Preferred qualifications : - 5+ years of related industry experience. - Experience in one or more of the following areas is preferred : NLP, LLM, RL - Candidates with top-tier conference papers, including ICML, NeurIPS, ICLR, CVPR, ICRA, KDD etc., relevant internship experience or winners of ACM competitions are preferred; - Experience in using data-driven methods to enhance the capability of LLMs through various stages of the model development - Experience in RAG, Prompt Engineering or other inference time methods to enhance the performance of the system

Job Information

[For Pay Transparency]Compensation Description (Annually)

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $187040 - $359720 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 :

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