Machine Learning Engineer Intern (Privacy and Data Protection Office) - 2026 Start (PhD)

Responsibilities

About the team PDPO(Privacy and Data Protection Office) is the organization to lead, supervise, and empower all TikTok's privacy work in an accountable and industry leading way. This team is the expert in the landscape of privacy risks and passionate about consulting across the company on implementing the proper safeguards and technical mitigations to ensure that our users' privacy is honored across the TikTok's products and platforms. We are looking for talented individuals to join us for an internship in 2026. Internships at TikTok aim to offer students industry exposure and hands-on experience. Turn your ambitions into reality as your inspiration brings infinite opportunities at TikTok. PhD internships at TikTok provide students with the opportunity to actively contribute to our products and research, and to the organization's future plans and emerging technologies. Our dynamic internship experience blends hands-on learning, enriching community-building and development events, and collaboration with industry experts. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis - we encourage you to apply early. Please state your availability clearly in your resume (Start date, End date). Responsibilities: The Machine Learning Engineer Intern will lead and collaborate with cross-functional teams to design, develop, and deploy sophisticated machine learning algorithms to enhance the performance of our business systems. - Formulate end-to-end machine learning models by utilizing ML, NLP techniques to deal with real-world signals generated from privacy products/ incidents/ review areas. - Analyze extensive, complex datasets to extract meaningful insights, identify opportunities for improvement, and facilitate data-driven decision-making. - Design and execute experiments, testing and iterating on machine learning models to optimize recommendation functions and boost user satisfaction. - Communicate final recommendations and drive decision making. You will utilize data-driven techniques in building solutions to help measure, validate, identify, and envision TikTok's privacy evolution. You will design and scope out projects, build operationalized analytics tools and platforms, and most importantly, use data and AI models to find insights, diagnose problems and tell compelling stories. Besides the technical side, you will also get the opportunity to work closely with various XFN teams, including but not limited to engineering, legal, audit, security, public, government relations, and products. You will be expected to build deep domain knowledge and build a strong domain expertise in privacy.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications: - Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Finance, Mathematics, Statistics, Operations Research or other related field - Solid background in NLP and analytics, personalization/recommendation and hands-on experience and solid understanding of machine learning and deep learning methods. - Experience performing data extraction, cleaning, analysis and presentation for medium to large datasets - Experience with at least one programming language (i.e. Python, R, Java, or C++) - Experience writing SQL queries - Experience with scientific computing and analysis packages such as NumPy, SciPy, Pandas, Scikit-learn, dplyr, or ggplot2 Preferred Qualifications: - Experience with statistics methods such as forecasting, time series, hypothesis testing, classification, clustering or regression analysis - Experience with data visualization libraries such as Matplotlib, Pyplot, ggplot2 - Experience with machine learning libraries and deep learning toolkits such as PyTorch, Caffe2, TensorFlow, Keras or Theano. - Experience with Large Language Model is a plus. By submitting an application for this role, you accept and agree to our global applicant privacy policy, which may be accessed here: ;br>
Job Information

[For Pay Transparency]Compensation Description (Hourly) - Campus Intern

The hourly rate range for this position in the selected city is $60- $60.

Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Interns have day one access to health insurance, life insurance, wellbeing benefits and more. Interns also receive 10 paid holidays per year and paid sick time (56 hours if hired in first half of year, 40 if hired in second half of year). Interns who are not working 100% remote may also be eligible for housing allowance.

The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.

For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates:

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:

1. Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;

2. Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and

3. Exercising sound judgment.

About TikTok

TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. At TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. TikTok's global headquarters are in Los Angeles and Singapore, and we also have offices in New York City, London, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo.

Why Join Us

Inspiring creativity is at the core of TikTok's mission. Our innovative product is built to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect - and our global, diverse teams make that possible. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and bring joy - a mission we work towards every day.

We strive to do great things with great people. We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. Every challenge is an opportunity to learn and innovate as one team. We're resilient and embrace challenges as they come. By constantly iterating and fostering an "Always Day 1" mindset, we achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our company, and our users. When we create and grow together, the possibilities are limitless. Join us.

Diversity & Inclusion

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 Accommodation

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