TikTok
Staff Research Engineer, LLM - TikTok Ads Core ML, Ranking
San Jose, California · Staff · Full-time · Posted Oct 28, 2026
- Education
- MS or above in a specified quantitative field or similar; the posting does not state an equivalent-experience alternative.
About the job
Develop and optimize large-scale advertising ranking and delivery systems using machine learning, deep learning, reinforcement learning, and LLM technologies.
What you'll do
- Lead development of advertising delivery systems and ranking models across the advertising funnel, including retrieval, sorting, personalization, and resource allocation.
- Drive strategic technical projects and establish system frameworks and standards to improve efficiency and monetization outcomes.
- Collaborate with product and business teams across global markets.
What they ask for
- MS or above in Computer Science, Statistics, Operations Research, Applied Mathematics, Physics, or a similar quantitative field, with related experience in search, ranking, or recommendation.
- Hands-on experience in machine learning, deep learning, statistical models, or applied mathematical methods.
- Proficiency in C/C++ and Python; familiarity with data structures and algorithms, Linux, online experimentation and analytics, and Hadoop and Spark.
- Familiarity with at least one of TensorFlow, Pytorch, or MXNet.
Nice to have
- Experience in reinforcement learning, transfer learning, counter-factual optimization, or LLMs.
- Understanding of online advertising business value or publications in NLP, CV, or recommender systems.
Tools
C/C++, Python, Linux, Hadoop, Spark, TensorFlow, Pytorch, MXNet
AI focus
Develop and apply ML/DL, reinforcement learning, LLM-based ranking, generative retrieval, and large recommendation models for advertising delivery and resource allocation.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative