Software Engineer Intern
TikTok
About the Role
Creative Effects are a significant part of the TikTok experience, enabling content creation to be easy, fun, and dynamic through features like beauty filters and AI Effects. The TikTok Effects Performance Team is responsible for the system powering every filter, AR effect, and visual effect used by hundreds of millions of creators daily. The mission is to ensure effects are smooth, instant, and power-efficient across all devices. This role involves working within the business architecture layer of a self-developed rendering engine to optimize effect performance.
Key Responsibilities
- Participate in the research and development of the effect performance architecture behind TikTok Camera, aiming for smooth, low-power effect experiences for hundreds of millions of creators.
- Contribute to the design and implementation of new effect capabilities within the business architecture layer of the self-developed rendering engine to enhance user creation experiences.
- Assist in the design and implementation of automated performance analysis pipelines, including automatic trace capture, agent-assisted bottleneck analysis, and regression detection, to evaluate effect performance.
- Apply profiling and optimization techniques such as frame-time analysis, rendering pipeline tuning, and graceful degradation to improve effect experiences across a wide range of mobile devices.
Requirements & Tech Stack
Minimum Qualifications
- Currently pursuing an Undergraduate/Graduate degree in Software Development, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Computer Graphics, or a related technical discipline.
- Ability to commit to working for 12 weeks during the Summer of 2027.
- Strong knowledge of data structures and algorithms.
- Proficiency in at least one coding language, including but not limited to C++, Python, Javascript.
- Curiosity towards graphics, real-time rendering, and mobile performance.
- Outstanding ability to analyze and solve problems.
- Good grasp of software engineering principles and building scalable systems.
Preferred Qualifications
- Passion for performance and solving challenging problems on real devices.
- Understanding of real-time rendering and graphics APIs such as OpenGL ES, Metal, or Vulkan.
- Experience with GPU and rendering performance analysis tools such as RenderDoc, Xcode GPU Debugger, Perfetto, or Snapdragon Profiler.
- Interest in AI Agent development and exploring how LLM-powered tools can improve engineering workflows.