Tech Lead, Senior Machine Learning Engineer - TikTok Search Algorithms (NLP, Ranking, Relevance, Understanding, User Engagement)

Responsibilities

TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. Our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. TikTok has global offices including Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Singapore, Jakarta, Seoul and Tokyo.

Why Join Us

Creation is the core of TikTok's purpose. Our platform is built to help imaginations thrive. This is doubly true of the teams that make TikTok possible.

Together, we inspire creativity and bring joy - a mission we all believe in and aim towards achieving every day. To us, every challenge, no matter how difficult, is an opportunity;

to learn, to innovate, and to grow as one team. Status quo? Never. Courage? Always. At TikTok, we create together and grow together.

That's how we drive impact - for ourselves, our company, and the communities we serve. Join us.

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.

We use cutting-edge machine learning techniques for end-to-end modeling and continuous innovation. The team focuses on building and optimizing distributed systems and machine learning systems, ranging from index compression, retrieving, and ranking algorithms.

Our main areas of work include :

1. Exploring state-of-the-art NLP (Natural Language Processing) technologies : From basic tasks like tokenization and Named Entity Recognition (NER) to applications such as query understanding and core relevance, we apply deep learning models across the entire pipeline, each detail filled with challenges.

2. Cross-modal modeling technology : Applying computer vision (CV) and NLP deep learning techniques in search to enhance video retrieval and ranking capabilities.

3. Large-scale streaming machine learning technology : Applying large-scale machine learning to address recommendation issues in search, making search more personalized and understanding user preferences better.

4. Architecture at the scale of hundreds of billions of data : From large-scale offline computation, performance and scheduling optimization in distributed systems, to building highly available, high-throughput, and low-latency online services, we delve deep into research and innovation in all aspects.

We are looking for strong research scientists and engineers at all levels, who are excited about growing their business understanding, building highly scalable and reliable software, and partnering across disciplines with global teams, in pursuit of excellence.

What you'll do

• Optimize the search quality to provide TikTok's users with the best search experience
• Combine your understanding of product objectives and take full advantage of modern machine learning and information retrieval techniques to improve search quality and perception
• Build core systems and algorithms development including query understanding, result ranking, query recommendation, system reliability, etc.
• Provide technical leadership to drive search strategy iterations including query understanding, recall & ranking, query recommendation, reliability, etc.
• Provide guidance, regular feedback, and mentorship to team members.

Qualifications

• Bachelor or advanced degree in computer science or a related technical discipline
• 5+ years of solid related industry experience in Search, Recommendation, or Ads
• Proficient coding skills and strong algorithm & data structure basis
• Machine learning experience in one or more of the following areas : NLP, Ranking, Ads, search engine, recommender system, and machine learning
• Effective communication and teamwork skills.

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 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 redacted