Backend Engineer Graduate

TikTok

San Jose, CAFresher14m agovia LinkedInH-1B sponsor · 86 entry-level filings

This job at a glance

Who can apply
New grads and up to 1 year · Bachelor's degree
Must know
Social mediaETLTroubleshootingMachine learningPythonJava
Work
On-site in San Jose
Pay
Not stated by the employer.
Skill demand
Machine learning24%Troubleshooting14%ETL11%Social media10%of 63 similar entry-level jobs posted in the US this week
Listed
Nov 12, 2026 · still open

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About the Role

Our Recommendation Architecture Team is responsible for building up and optimizing the architecture of the recommendation system for TikTok's vertical businesses, providing the most stable and best experience for TikTok users. We focus on optimizing the recommendation system architecture, ensuring stability and high availability, and improving the performance of both online services and offline data flows. We work closely with algorithm teams to improve recommendation effectiveness while boosting performance and reducing costs. As a graduate, you will get opportunities to pursue bold ideas, tackle complex challenges, and unlock limitless growth.

Key Responsibilities

  • Participate in the design of the recommendation system to enhance development efficiency, performance, scalability, and recommendation effectiveness.
  • Build and maintain high-performance, high-availability online services (retrieval, ranking orchestration, feature and index services) for the TikTok recommendation system.
  • Build efficient and reliable data pipelines for candidate generation, profile generation, and training-example generation.
  • Pursue extreme performance optimization in the storage layer, computing layer, or application layer; optimize latency (P99), throughput, and resource cost at scale.
  • Troubleshoot production issues and build mechanisms that ensure operational stability, including capacity planning, disaster recovery, and monitoring.
  • Collaborate with machine learning engineers to productionize models efficiently and safely.

Requirements & Tech Stack

  • Strong programming skills with good code design and style; familiarity with at least one of Go, C++, Java, or Python.
  • Solid understanding of data structures, algorithms, operating systems, computer networking, and distributed/scalable systems design.
  • Interest in recommendation systems, with an understanding of their principles or execution processes.
  • Internship experience in performance optimization or architecture work in high-traffic scenarios.
  • Familiarity with RPC frameworks, caching, or large-scale storage/messaging systems (Redis, Kafka, etc.).

Qualifications

  • Individuals who are completing or have recently completed a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related discipline.
  • Agile and quick learner with self-motivation, a sense of ownership, and creative problem-solving abilities.
  • Successful candidates must be able to commit to an onboarding date by the end of the year. Please state your availability and graduation date clearly in your resume.

H-1B sponsor

TikTok filed 86 entry-level H-1B applications for new hires (Oct 2025 - Jun 2026, Department of Labor).

See their H-1B record →

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