Technology

Research Scientist Intern (TikTok-Privacy Innovation Lab-Multimodal Generative Model) - 2026 Start (PhD)

Location
:

San Jose

Employment Type
:

Intern

Job Code
:

A107212

Responsibilities

At TikTok, we treat privacy as our top priority in our product design and implementation. Privacy is not just about regulation compliance, but also about a more trusted way to enable technology innovation by respecting users' privacy choices!

About the Team
Privacy Innovation (PI) Lab is established to explore the next frontier of privacy technology and theory in the digitalized world. We provide key insights and technical solutions on privacy-related innovation for all TikTok's products. Furthermore, we also collaborate with worldwide technical and academic communities to build an open ecosystem to promote a privacy-friendly digital experience.

We are looking for talented individuals to join us for an internship in 2026. PhD Internships at our company aim to provide students with the opportunity to actively contribute to our products and research, and to the organization's future plans and emerging technologies.

PhD internships at our company provides students with the opportunity to actively contribute to our products and research, and to the organization's future plans and emerging technologies. Our dynamic internship experience blends hands-on learning, enriching community - building and development events, and collaboration with industry experts.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. We encourage you to apply early. Please state your availability clearly in your resume (Start date, End date).

About the Role
We are building next-generation generative foundation models, with a strong focus on diffusion-based and unified generation-understanding architectures, deployed in privacy-sensitive, production environments.
This role sits at the intersection of

• Large-scale model training systems
• GPU-first architecture and kernel-level optimization
• Diffusion / DiT / unified multimodal foundation models
• Privacy-preserving and compliant training pipelines

You will work on end-to-end training architecture design, from model-parallel execution and GPU efficiency to robust, fault-tolerant, privacy-aware training infrastructure.

Responsibilities:
You will participate in the architecture design and deep optimization of next-generation text-to-image and text-to-video models, including but not limited to:
1. Develop a deep understanding of and optimize DiT + Flow Matching / Rectified Flow–based generative models
2. Lead or contribute to the design and implementation of: Diffusion Transformer (DiT / MM-DiT) architecture improvements; Unified text-to-image / text-to-video model designs; Latent space, tokenization, and conditioning mechanisms.
3. Perform joint algorithmic and system-level optimization, targeting: Training stability and convergence speed; Memory and compute efficiency; Generation quality and consistency
4. Address challenges in long-sequence, high-resolution, and video generation, including: Efficient attention and temporal modeling strategies; Long-context and long-latent modeling
5. Collaborate closely with systems and kernel engineers to map model designs to efficient implementations
6. Reproduce, analyze, and advance state-of-the-art generative models (beyond simple replication)

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications
1. Currently pursuing PhD in Computer science, computer engineering, or a related technical discipline.
2. Deep understanding of Diffusion / Flow Matching / Rectified Flow
3. Strong familiarity with DiT / Transformer-based architectures in generative modeling
4. Ability to debug the full pipeline from mathematical formulation → code → training → generated outputs
5. Proficiency with PyTorch and hands-on experience training large-scale models

Preferred Qualifications
1. Practical experience with text-to-image or text-to-video models (non-toy systems)
2. Familiarity with multimodal modeling (Text / Image / Video / Audio)
3. Research publications or open-source contributions

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

Job Information

【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Hourly) - Campus Intern

The hourly rate range for this position in the selected city is $60- $60.

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Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Interns have day one access to health insurance, life insurance, wellbeing benefits and more. Interns also receive 10 paid holidays per year and 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.

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The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.

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For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates:
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Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:

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1. Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;

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2. Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and

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3. Exercising sound judgment.

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About TikTok

TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. At TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. TikTok's global headquarters are in Los Angeles and Singapore, and we also have offices in New York City, London, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo.

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Why Join Us

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. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and bring joy - a mission we work towards every day.

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We strive to do great things with great people. We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. 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. When we create and grow together, the possibilities are limitless. Join us.

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Diversity & Inclusion

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TikTok is committed to creating an inclusive space where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. Our platform connects people from across the globe and so does our workplace. 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.

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TikTok Accommodation

TikTok is committed to providing reasonable accommodations in our recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, sincerely held religious beliefs or other reasons protected by applicable laws. If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at

https://tinyurl.com/RA-request