TikTok USDS Joint Venture
Machine Learning Engineer, Search - USDS
Seattle, Washington · Mid
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
$13,144 more — $143,104 — moves this role to Level II and 2 lottery entries. That figure is inside the range the employer already advertised.
Based on the DOL prevailing wage for this occupation and worksite, a base salary of $143,104 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) · Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA. 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.
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About the role
- The Search team is responsible for the machine learning algorithm for TikTok's rapidly growing video search, ecommerce search, local service search and AI search business.
Responsibilities
- Improve the basic search quality and user experience: Optimize query analysis and text relevance matching.
- Understand video content and implement multi-modal matching.
- Improve users' perception of product authority, and deeply participate in the design and implementation of core search products.
- Design and implement the end-to-end ranking system (recall, first stage ranking, final stage ranking and mixed row): Use massive behavioral data to deeply model users' personalized interests.
- Innovation with Generative Recommendation Systems: Drive the integration of generative recommendation approaches, leveraging LLMs to directly generate personalized content recommendations, moving beyond traditional ranking-based methods.
- 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
- Familiarity with generative recommendation frameworks and their application in large-scale systems is highly desirable.
Nice to have
- Prior experience in search, recommendation, or advertisement algorithms.
- Publication records in journals or conferences.
- 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.
- Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;
- Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems
- Exercising sound judgment.
Compensation
- 【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Annually)
- The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $129960 - $246240 annually.
- 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).
Benefits
- 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.
- The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.
- Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location.
Company info
- We use state-of-the-art large-scale machine learning technology, cutting-edge NLP, CV and multi-modal technology, and generative models (LLM, VLM) to build the industry's top-class search engines to provide the best search experience, for more than 1 billion monthly TikTok users around the world.
- 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.