Overview
This PhD internship sits within ByteDance’s Global Payment team, which builds secure and scalable payment infrastructure for platforms like TikTok. The role focuses on applying advanced machine learning and AI research to detect, prevent, and mitigate financial compliance and fraud risks across complex, real-time internet scenarios such as live streaming and e-commerce.
What You’ll Gain from This Internship
- Hands-on experience applying cutting-edge AI research to real-world financial risk problems
- Exposure to large-scale payment systems and compliance challenges in a global tech company
- Opportunity to experiment with Generative AI, LLMs, VLMs, and multimodal models in production-like environments
- Collaboration with experienced researchers and engineers in a fast-paced, research-driven setting
- A strong bridge between academic research and industry applications
Key Responsibilities
- Design and develop machine learning models to identify and mitigate financial compliance risks
- Detect emerging risk patterns across live streaming, e-commerce, and other digital business scenarios
- Apply advanced AI techniques, including LLMs, graph neural networks, and multimodal learning, to financial security use cases
- Work with large-scale datasets involving text, images, and multimodal inputs
- Improve the efficiency and effectiveness of compliance review and risk operations through AI-driven solutions
- Stay current with the latest research and translate new ideas into practical implementations
Minimum Qualifications
- Currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, Data Science, or a related field
- Strong experience in AI modeling and familiarity with at least one major framework such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or MXNet
- Strong curiosity, self-motivation, and ability to communicate technical ideas clearly
Preferred Qualifications
- Publications in top-tier conferences or journals such as NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, ICCV, AAAI, or related venues
- Prior relevant internship or industry research experience
- Interest in payment systems, financial risk, or compliance technology
Internship Details
- Target Audience: PhD students
- Start Period: 2026 (rolling review)
- Application Process: Resume screening followed by a technical online assessment
- Availability: Start and end dates must be clearly stated in the resume
About ByteDance
Founded in 2012, ByteDance’s mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. Its global products, including TikTok, CapCut, and Lemon8, serve millions of users worldwide. ByteDance emphasizes innovation, diversity, and an “Always Day 1” mindset, encouraging continuous learning and impact-driven work.
Why This Role Matters
This internship is ideal for PhD students who want to see their research directly influence large-scale, real-world financial systems while working at the intersection of AI, security, and global digital payments.
