Backend Engineer Graduate (TikTok Vertical Recommendation Architecture, Content Intelligence) - 2026 Start (BS/MS)

About the team

The Content Understanding Architecture team designs and operates the system foundations behind TikTok’s content intelligence capabilities. The group focuses on highly available, scalable architectures for training, inference, and application, and works closely with algorithm teams across areas such as video and LIVE. Its mission is to apply large language models and other large-scale content understanding models efficiently in use cases like recommendation, security, and push notifications, while improving platform stability, reliability, and performance.

For 2026, TikTok is seeking graduate talent eager to take on complex engineering problems, contribute bold ideas, and grow in a fast-moving environment.

Candidates selected for this role must be able to start by the end of 2026. Applicants should clearly mention their graduation date and availability in their resume. Each candidate may submit up to two applications across TikTok and its affiliates globally, and applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, so early submission is encouraged.

Role overview

This position involves building and improving backend architecture for content understanding systems, with a strong emphasis on scalability, low latency, reliability, and efficient large-model training and inference on GPU-based infrastructure.

Key responsibilities

• Contribute to the architecture of content understanding training and inference systems, with a focus on improving development efficiency, system performance, scalability, and stability.
• Develop highly available and low-latency inference infrastructure to support both online and offline training and inference for TikTok’s large-scale content workloads.
• Evaluate training and inference system performance and drive optimizations for large language model workflows on GPU-based systems.
• Monitor emerging technologies and practical industry use cases, then help evolve the team’s technical architecture and broaden content understanding applications.
• Work with global colleagues to solve challenges that come with building for a worldwide, distributed user base.

Qualifications

Minimum requirements:

• Final-year graduate in Software Development, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a closely related technical field.
• Working knowledge of high-concurrency content processing systems, along with hands-on familiarity with distributed engines such as Flink or Spark and messaging systems such as Kafka or Pulsar.
• Strong programming ability with sound code structure and coding practices, plus proficiency in at least one of C++, Python, or Java.
• Clear interest in large-model training, inference, and optimization; prior related exposure is a plus.

Preferred qualifications:

• Interest in content understanding, with practical experience in reasoning systems or streaming data processing.
• Exposure to large language models, including training, inference, efficiency tuning, and throughput improvement.
• Participation in technical competitions such as programming contests or mathematical modeling is advantageous.
• Comfort working in a fast-paced, multicultural, globally distributed team and contributing effectively as a collaborator.

About TikTok

TikTok is a short-form video platform with a mission to inspire creativity and bring joy. Its global headquarters are in Los Angeles and Singapore, with additional offices in cities including New York, London, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo.

Why join

The company emphasizes curiosity, humility, innovation, and an “Always Day 1” mindset. Teams work together to solve meaningful problems, build for a global community, and create space for diverse voices and perspectives.

Diversity and inclusion

TikTok states that it is committed to building an inclusive workplace where people are valued for their skills, experience, and unique viewpoints, and where the organization reflects the global communities it serves.

Additional information

By applying, candidates agree to the company’s global applicant privacy policy. For questions about the role, the listed contact email may be used.