Research Scientist Graduate; eCommerce Recommendation PhD

Research Scientist Graduate (eCommerce Recommendation) - 2026 Start (PhD)

Location:

San Jose

Team:
Technology

Employment Type:

Regular

Job Code: A108842

Team Introduction:
Our E-commerce Recommendation Team is responsible for building up and scaling our recommendation system to provide the best shopping experience for our Tik Tok users. We are looking for talented individuals to join our team in 2026. As a graduate, you will get unparalleled opportunities for you to kickstart your career, pursue bold ideas and explore limitless growth opportunities. Co-create a future driven by your inspiration with Byte Dance.

Successful candidates must be able to commit to an onboarding date by end of year 2026. Please state your availability and graduation date clearly in your resume. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis - we encourage you to apply early.

• Work in a team to conduct cutting-edge research in machine learning algorithms, such as retrieval and recommendation algorithms
• Participate in building large-scale (10 million to 100 million) e-commerce recommendation algorithms and systems, including commodity recommendations, live stream recommendations, short video recommendations etc in Tik Tok
• Build long and short term user interest models, analyze and extract relevant information from large amounts of various data and design algorithms to explore users' latent interests efficiently
• Apply machine learning algorithms to improve the different business scenarios, such as search ranking, natural language and video understanding, and trust and safety

Minimum Qualifications:

• Final year or recent PhD graduates with a background in Computer Science, related technical field or equivalent industrial research experience.
• Experience in one of the following fields: recommendation systems, online advertising, information retrieval, natural language processing, computer vision, machine learning, large-scale data mining, or related fields preferred.
• Familiar with at least one of the mainstream deep learning frameworks, such as Tensor Flow or PyTorch.
• Passionate about solving complex and challenging problems.
• Must obtain work authorization in the country of employment at the time of hire, and maintain ongoing work authorization during employment.

At Byte Dance our benefits are designed to convey company culture and values, to create an efficient and inspiring work environment, and to support employees to give their best in both work and life. We offer the following benefits to eligible employees:
We cover 100% premium coverage for employee medical insurance, approximately 75% premium coverage for dependents and offer a Health Savings Account (HSA) with a company match. As well as Dental, Vision, Short/Long term Disability, Basic Life, Voluntary Life and AD&D insurance plans. In addition to Flexible Spending Account (FSA) Options like Health Care, Limited Purpose and Dependent Care. Our time off and leave plans are: 10 paid holidays per year plus 17 days of Paid Personal Time Off (PPTO) (prorated upon hire and increased by tenure) and 10 paid sick days per year as well as 12 weeks of paid Parental leave and 8 weeks of paid Supplemental Disability.

We also provide generous benefits like mental and emotional health benefits through our EAP and Lyra. A 401K company match, gym and cellphone service reimbursements. The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $136,800 - $259,200 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…