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

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. They are looking for a Machine Learning Engineer Intern to lead and collaborate with cross-functional teams to design, develop, and deploy machine learning algorithms, focusing on enhancing privacy and data protection. 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 Utilize data-driven techniques in building solutions to help measure, validate, identify, and envision TikTok's privacy evolution 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 Work closely with various XFN teams, including but not limited to engineering, legal, audit, security, public, government relations, and products Build deep domain knowledge and build a strong domain expertise in privacy Skills 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 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 Benefits Interns have day one access to health insurance Life insurance Wellbeing benefits and more Interns also receive 10 paid holidays per year 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 Company Overview TikTok is a short-form video entertainment app and social network platform. It is a sub-organization of ByteDance. It was founded in 2003, and is headquartered in Los Angeles, California, USA, with a workforce of 10001+ employees. Its website is Company H1B Sponsorship TikTok has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships, with 979 in 2025, 601 in 2024, 387 in 2023, 322 in 2022, 133 in 2021, 72 in 2020. Please note that this does not guarantee sponsorship for this specific role.