Machine Learning Engineer Intern (Trust & Safety) - 2026 Start (PhD)

Written by the T&S Network from TikTok's posting.

Builds machine learning models, classifiers and algorithms that detect content and behavior violating TikTok's community guidelines and related local regulations. The team's job is protecting the platform and its users through content safety systems. This is a 2026 PhD internship.

What you'd do

• Build content safety systems for TikTok.
• Develop scalable classifiers, tools, models and algorithms using machine learning, computer vision and data mining.
• Improve trust and safety strategy and model performance against product objectives.
• Coordinate with other teams to safeguard TikTok across all markets.

What it asks for

• Enrolled in a doctoral program in computer science, engineering or another quantitative discipline.
• Substantial background in one of machine learning, pattern recognition, NLP, data mining or computer vision.
• Commit to at least 3 months, either January to June or May to August.
• Prior work on recommender systems, search, ads or similar projects (preferred).
• Publications at top AI conferences or journals such as KDD, NeurIPS, CVPR or ACL (preferred).
• Taken part in machine learning, data mining, CV or NLP competitions (preferred).
• Strong grasp of data structures and algorithms (preferred).

Worth knowing

• Internship position.

Our best summary of the posting, and it can be wrong. The employer's posting is what counts: read it in full on TikToknorth_east before you apply. If we got something wrong, report this listing.