TikTok
Research Scientist (Trust and Safety - Vision Language Models/VLM)
San Jose, California · Full-time · Posted Oct 28, 2026
- Education
- Ph.D. in Computer Science, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, or a related field.
About the job
Research and develop vision-language models (VLMs) for TikTok applications, including content moderation, by improving model capabilities, architecture, and inference efficiency.
What you'll do
- Enhance VLMs with features such as OCR and captioning for TikTok business applications.
- Explore model architectures and inference-efficient designs for scaled downstream applications.
- Collaborate across teams on VLM projects and extend research insights to academia.
What they ask for
- Ph.D. in Computer Science, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, or a related field.
- Strong understanding of cutting-edge LLM research.
- Proficiency in Python, Rust, or C++, and experience with deep learning frameworks.
Nice to have
- Research project leadership or published research and contributions to the LLM community.
- Experience with inference acceleration, AI systems evaluation, agent development, or distributed computing.
Tools
Python, Rust, C++, pytorch, deepspeed, megatron, vllm, Langchain
AI focus
Develop and apply VLMs, including OCR and captioning; explore model architecture and efficient inference for downstream applications.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative