Overview
This Research Internship with ByteDance’s Research & Development (R&D) team offers a rare opportunity to work on cutting-edge recommendation system challenges that power some of the world’s largest digital platforms, including TikTok. You will contribute to advanced research projects exploring large language models (LLMs), graph neural networks (GNNs), and real-time recommendation systems that impact hundreds of millions of users globally.
About the Team
The R&D team builds and maintains core systems that drive user growth, content discovery, live streaming, social features, and e-commerce experiences across ByteDance products. The team works in a high-impact, global environment, solving complex engineering and machine learning problems while continuously optimising system performance, scalability, and user experience.
Research Project Focus
This project explores next-generation recommendation systems by leveraging large models to address key industry challenges, including:
- Cold-start problems for new users
- Real-time live-streaming recommendations
- Maintaining content diversity in single-feed experiences
- Simplifying complex e-commerce recommendation funnels
The goal is to design more adaptive, accurate, and streamlined recommendation architectures that improve user satisfaction, retention, and long-term business growth.
Key Responsibilities
- Conduct research on large language models and advanced recommendation techniques
- Design and experiment with models for user intent inference and interest prediction
- Apply machine learning, NLP, and graph-based methods to large-scale user behavior data
- Prototype and evaluate end-to-end recommendation system improvements
- Collaborate closely with engineers and researchers to translate research into impact
- Contribute to technical discussions, documentation, and research outputs
Requirements
- PhD holder (or close to completion) in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Mathematics, or related fields
- Strong programming skills with solid software engineering fundamentals
- Background in machine learning, NLP, or data mining
- Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills
- Passion for large-scale systems and real-world impact
Preferred:
- Experience with recommendation systems, search, or computational advertising
About the Company
Founded in 2012, ByteDance is a global technology company with products including TikTok, CapCut, Lemon8, and Douyin. Its mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life by building platforms that help people create, connect, and discover content worldwide.
Internship Details
Location: Singapore (or ByteDance research hub, subject to confirmation)
Duration: To be confirmed
Commitment: Full-time
Working Arrangement: To be confirmed
Stipend: Not specified
Application Deadline: Not specified
This internship is ideal for research-driven candidates who want to push the boundaries of large-scale recommendation systems while making a global impact.
