Machine Learning Engineer, Search

TikTok USDS JV in Seattle offers a comprehensive, benefits-forward environment to advance machine learning in search and multi-modal recommendation systems. From day one, you and your family gain medical, dental and vision coverage, plus a 401(k) plan with company matching. Enjoy paid parental leave, disability protection, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, and a generous time-off package designed to support work-life balance and sustainable growth. The culture emphasizes creativity, collaboration and an Always Day 1 mindset, with a strong commitment to diversity, inclusion and responsible innovation that serves a broad user base.

Benefits

• Day one medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 401(k) savings plan with company match
• Paid parental leave
• Short-term and long-term disability coverage
• Life insurance
• Wellbeing benefits
• 10 paid holidays per year
• 10 paid sick days per year
• 17 days of paid personal time, prorated at hire with tenure-based accruals

Culture and opportunities

Join a team focused on safety, privacy and security while delivering creative, impactful products. TikTok USDS JV champions diversity and inclusion and builds with a global, diverse workforce in mind. The company encourages curiosity, humility and collaboration, maintaining an Always Day 1 mindset to drive meaningful outcomes for users, communities and the business. A commitment to accommodating diverse needs is part of the hiring process, with supported avenues for reasonable accommodations.

Responsibilities

• Elevate search quality and user experience by optimizing query analysis and text relevance
• Model and implement multi-modal matching to understand video content
• Enhance perceived authority of search products and contribute to core product design and implementation
• Advance the end-to-end search experience across recall, ranking, and presentation
• Design and deploy the full ranking pipeline (recall, first-stage, final-stage, mixed rows) using large-scale behavioral data to model personalized interests
• Support ecosystem development from technology and business perspectives, tackling supply and demand matching, cold-start challenges and sustainable growth
• Analyze and guide the evolution of systems to achieve long-term growth in GMV
• Drive Generative Recommendation Systems initiatives, using LLMs to generate personalized content recommendations and explore GenRec frameworks
• Collaborate closely with product managers, data scientists, infrastructure engineers and operations to enable search personalization aligned with product goals

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science, Machine Learning or a related field
• Proficiency with machine learning frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch) and programming languages (Python, Java, C++) along with solid foundations in data structures and algorithms
• At least 2 years of experience building large-scale search or recommendation systems (feed, search, ads, etc.); familiarity with generative recommendation frameworks is highly desirable
• Experience with search, recommendation or advertisement algorithms
• Publication records in journals or conferences

Technologies

• TensorFlow
• PyTorch
• Python
• Java
• C++
• GenRec
• LLM
• VLM

Compensation

The base salary for this role in Seattle ranges from USD 129,960 to 246,240 per year. Total compensation may vary based on qualifications, skills, experience and location and may include discretionary bonuses or incentives and restricted stock units as part of the package.

USDS also notes that benefits may vary by employment type and location, and the organization reserves the right to modify programs. For recruitment accommodations, USDS provides reasonable adjustments; candidates needing assistance can request it at the following link: USDS reasonable accommodations.