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TikTok · 2 weeks ago

Software Engineer Intern (Data Ecosystem) - 2026 Summer (BS/MS)

Seattle, WA

Internship

Onsite

Intern

$42.75/hr - $42.75/hr

Start in 2026 Summer

TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video, and they are seeking a Software Engineer Intern for their Data Ecosystem Team. The intern will play a vital role in designing and implementing storage solutions for TikTok's recommendation system, ensuring system reliability and performance.

Content CreatorsContent DiscoveryMedia and EntertainmentSocial MediaVideo

H1B Sponsor Likely

Responsibilities

Design and implement real-time and offline data architecture for large-scale recommendation systems

Build scalable and high-performance streaming Lakehouse systems that power feature pipelines, model training, and real-time inference

Collaborate with ML platform teams to support PyTorch-based model training workflows and design efficient data formats and access patterns for large-scale samples and features

Own core components of our distributed storage and processing stack, from file format to stream compaction to metadata management

Qualification

Lakehouse technologiesJava/Scala/C++Apache FlinkPyTorch integrationColumnar file formatsDebugging skillsPerformance tuningData versioning

Required

Currently pursuing an Undergraduate/Master in Computer Science or a related technical discipline

Able to commit to working for 12 weeks during Summer 2026

Must obtain work authorization in country of employment at the time of hire, and maintain ongoing work authorization during employment

Familiarity with modern Lakehouse technologies such as Apache Paimon, Iceberg, Delta Lake, or Hudi, especially around incremental ingestion, schema evolution, and snapshot isolation

Preferred

Experience in designing and optimizing Flink + Paimon architectures for unified batch/stream processing

Familiarity with feature storage and training data pipelines, and their integration with PyTorch, especially for large-scale model training

Knowledge of columnar file formats (Parquet, ORC, Lance) and how they are used in feature engineering or ML data loading

Proficiency in Java/Scala/C++, and strong debugging/performance tuning ability

Previous experience in Lakehouse metadata management, compaction scheduling, or data versioning is a plus

Solid understanding of Apache Flink internals, with hands-on experience in state management, connectors, or UDFs

Benefits

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.

Company

TikTok

Glassdoor3.4

TikTok is a short-form video entertainment app and social network platform. It is a sub-organization of ByteDance.

Founded in 2003

Los Angeles, California, USA

10001+ employees

https://www.tiktok.com

H1B Sponsorship

TikTok has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)

Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship

Represents job field similar to this job

Trends of Total Sponsorships

2025 (979)

2024 (601)

2023 (387)

2022 (322)

2021 (133)

2020 (72)