Software Engineer Intern (Global E-commerce-Search) - 2027 Summer

Location: Seattle, Washington, United States of America Department: Machine learning

The Global E-Commerce Search Infrastructure team builds the systems that power product discovery on TikTok Shop. We work across retrieval, indexing, query understanding, real-time data processing, and AI-enabled search infrastructure. Our goal is to help customers find relevant products quickly and reliably while operating services on a global scale.

As an intern, you will be matched with one well-scoped project based on your experience, interests, and team priorities. You will work with a dedicated mentor and collaborate with engineers across search, machine learning, and data infrastructure.

We are looking for talented individuals to join us for an internship. Our internship program offers students hands-on experience, industry exposure, and opportunities to apply their knowledge to real-world challenges while building a strong foundation for personal and professional growth.

Interns will gain practical experience, explore potential career paths, and participate in social events, learning programs, and development workshops alongside industry professionals.

Candidates may apply to a maximum of two positions across Our Company and its affiliates globally. Applications will be considered in the order they are submitted.

Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, so we encourage you to apply early. Please clearly state your availability in your resume, including your start and end dates.

Online Assessment

Candidates who pass resume screening will be invited to participate in Our Company's technical online assessment.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement a scoped feature or system component with guidance from your mentor.
• Write clear, maintainable, and tested production code in languages such as C++, Go, Java, or Python.
• Participate in design discussions, code reviews, testing, documentation, and launch-readiness reviews.
• Use metrics and benchmarks to evaluate system quality, such as latency, throughput, reliability, freshness, or search relevance.
• Investigate technical issues, identify root causes, and propose practical improvements.
• Present your work and results to the team at the end of the internship.

Minimum Qualifications

• Currently pursuing a Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, or a related technical field.
• Able to work full-time for 12 consecutive weeks.
• Programming experience in at least one general-purpose language, such as C++, Go, Java, or Python.
• Understanding of data structures, algorithms, and object-oriented or modular software design.
• Ability to communicate effectively and work collaboratively in a team environment.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience in one or more of the following is helpful but not required:

• Coursework, research, personal projects, open-source contributions, or prior internships involving software systems.
• Search or information-retrieval concepts, such as inverted indexes, BM25, learning-to-rank, vector search, FAISS, or HNSW.
• Distributed systems, databases, storage systems, or data-processing frameworks such as Kafka, Flink, or Spark.
• AI or machine-learning infrastructure, model serving, retrieval-augmented generation, or agentic systems.
• Performance analysis, debugging, Linux development, or competitive programming.

By submitting an application for this role, you accept and agree to our global applicant privacy policy, which may be accessed here: https://careers.tiktok.com/legal/privacy