TikTok USDS Joint Venture
Machine Learning Engineer, Recommendations - USDS
San José, California
Stay score
odds of building a lasting career here
Sponsors, but it's cap-subject — you still face the weighted lottery (~61% per draw at Level IV). Good if you win; have a cap-exempt backup on your list.
Lottery odds assume a STEM candidate.
Personalize to your clock →H-1B wage level
the lottery is wage-weighted — each level is one more entry
The bottom of this range ($122,574) is below the Level I prevailing wage of $152,797. An H-1B cannot be filed below the prevailing wage, so an offer at the floor of this band could not be sponsored as posted.
Based on the DOL prevailing wage for this occupation and worksite, a base salary of $187,075 would place this position at wage Level II. That figure is within the posted range, and I'd like to target it. This role classifies under "Software Developers" for prevailing-wage purposes.
DOL prevailing wage, 2026-27 wage year · Software Developers (15-1252) · San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA. Wage level is derived by USCIS from the offered wage, occupation and worksite; the occupation shown is inferred from the job title.
Employer immigration record
from this employer's Department of Labor filings
Files H-1B transfers
Sourced from Department of Labor LCA, PERM and prevailing-wage disclosure data. Employer matching is by name, so figures may be split across an employer's legal entities. Absence of a filing means none appears in our copy of the data, not that none exists.
Community outcomes
No reports yet — be the first to help the next applicant.
About the role
- We are a group of applied machine learning engineers and data scientists that focus on general feed recommendations and E-commerce recommendations.
- We are interested and excited in applying large scale machine learning to solve various real-world problems.
Responsibilities
- Participate in building large-scale (10 million to 100 million) recommendation algorithms and systems, including commodity recommendations, live stream recommendations, short video recommendations etc in TikTok.
- 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.
- Design, develop, evaluate and iterate on predictive models for candidate generation and ranking (eg.
- Click Through Rate and Conversion Rate prediction), including, but not limited to building real-time data pipelines, feature engineering, model optimization and innovation.
- Design and build supporting/debugging tools as needed.
- Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and bring joy - a mission we work towards every day.
- We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company.
- When we create and grow together, the possibilities are limitless.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science or related fields.
- Experience with at least one programming language like C++/Python or equivalent.
Nice to have
- The Joint Venture has been established in compliance with the Executive Order signed by President Trump on September 25, 2025.
- Our foundation is a comprehensive data privacy and cybersecurity program we operate under defined safeguards to protect national security and secure U.S. user data, apps and the algorithm.
- We safeguard the U.S. content ecosystem, holding decision-making authority for trust and safety policies and moderation.
- 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.
- 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.
Compensation
- 【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Annually)
Company info
- We are developing innovative algorithms and techniques to improve user engagement and satisfaction, converting creative ideas into business-impacting solutions.
- We strive to do great things with great people.
- 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.
Equal opportunity
- USDS Reasonable Accommodation
- If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at https://tinyurl.com/USDS-RA
This listing is sourced directly from TikTok USDS Joint Venture's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.