Research Scientist - Data and State Acceleration - Global Frontier Tech Recruitment Program - 2027 Start (PhD)Location: San JoseEmployment Type: RegularJob Code: A87612AResponsibilitiesWe are looking for talented individuals to join our team in 2027. As a graduate, you will get opportunities to pursue bold ideas, tackle complex challenges, and unlock limitless growth. Launch your career where inspiration is infinite at our Company. Successful candidates must be able to commit to an onboarding date by end of year 2027. Please state your availability and graduation date clearly in your resume. Team Introduction: Our Arch-Data Ecosystem team plays a crucial role in the data ecosystem of the TikTok Recommendation System, focusing on creating offline and real-time data storage solutions for large-scale recommendation, search, and advertising businesses, serving over 1 billion users. The core goals of the team are to ensure high system reliability, uninterrupted service, and smooth data processing. We are committed to building a storage and computing infrastructure that can adapt to various data sources and meet diverse storage requirements, ultimately providing efficient, cost-effective, and user-friendly data storage and management tools for the business. Topic Content: Building a unified infrastructure that integrates the "training data base" and "training/inference state system" for multimodal foundation models in search, recommendation, and advertising scenarios. Through collaborative optimization of data lakes, caching, distributed computing, and GPU IO, we aim to reduce training and inference costs for foundation models while improving iteration efficiency.QualificationsMinimum Qualification(s): Individuals who are completing or recently completed a PhD in Software Development, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
Experience building large-scale distributed systems, preferably in storage, stream processing, or ML infrastructure. Understanding of Apache Flink internals, with hands-on experience in state management, connectors, or UDFs. Familiarity with modern Lakehouse technologies such as Apache Paimon, Iceberg, Delta Lake, or Hudi, especially around incremental ingestion, schema evolution, and snapshot isolation.Preferred Qualification(s): Experience in designing and optimizing Flink + Paimon architectures for unified batch/stream processing. Familiarity with feature storage and training data pipelines, and their integration with PyTorch, especially for large-scale model training. Knowledge of columnar file formats (Parquet, ORC, Lance) and how they are used in feature engineering or ML data loading. Proficiency in Java/Scala/C++, and strong debugging/performance tuning ability. Previous experience in Lakehouse metadata management, compaction scheduling, or data versioning. Knowledge of legacy data stores like HBase/Kudu.Job InformationFor Pay TransparencyCompensation Description (Annually) The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $ - $ annually.
Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate's qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units.
Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others. Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure). The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice. 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.About TikTokTikTok 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 UsInspiring 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 & InclusionTikTok 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 AccommodationTikTok 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