Software Engineer Graduate - Global Advertising Data Platform

About the Team

The Global Advertising Data Platform team develops the foundational data infrastructure and products used for advertising across TikTok's worldwide offerings. Their work spans petabyte-scale data ingestion, storage, and query services, supporting thousands of internal systems and users daily. Their goal is to create an AI-native data platform that empowers intelligent agents for dependable data processing and governance at an international advertising scale.

Role Overview

As a graduate engineer on this team, you will engage with challenging technical problems and have the freedom to implement innovative solutions that improve advertiser experiences, boost efficiency, and enable rapid business growth. Candidates must confirm availability for onboarding by year-end and specify their graduation date clearly.

Core Responsibilities

• Lead the design and development of high-performance, scalable services handling hundreds of millions of advertising users' data interactions, utilizing an end-to-end approach from problem definition to optimization.
• Create agent-facing APIs and tooling for seamless data discovery and usage with strict access control, typed input, and auditability.
• Develop semantic data layers that convert implicit tribal knowledge into machine-readable definitions such as metrics, dimensions, data lineage, and validation contracts ensuring reliability and verifiability.
• Implement quality control mechanisms including coding standards, comprehensive test suites, golden queries, regression tests, impact analysis, and data quality monitoring to detect semantic drift proactively.
• Address complex challenges related to concurrency, multi-tenant data isolation with policy-driven governance, system decoupling, and cost and performance optimizations at scale.

Required Qualifications

• Completion or imminent completion of a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field.
• Strong passion for computer science and internet technology with proficiency in at least one programming language such as Java, C, C++, Python, or Go.
• Fundamental computer science knowledge including data structures, algorithms, operating systems, databases, and networking.
• Analytical mindset capable of abstracting complex business logic into clear system boundaries.
• Comfort using AI-assisted coding tools alongside sound judgment to validate produced outcomes.
• Motivated learner with strong communication skills for cross-functional collaboration.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with big data or distributed systems technologies, e.g., Spark, Flink, Kafka, Iceberg, Hudi, ClickHouse, Presto, or Trino.
• Hands-on practice building applications involving large language models (LLMs), such as retrieval-augmented generation, agent frameworks, function/tool calling, natural-language-to-SQL, or model evaluation.
• Knowledge of data warehousing best practices including dimensional modeling, semantic layers, dbt tooling, data lineage, and governance.
• Demonstrated contributions to open-source projects, research, competitive programming, or relevant significant personal projects.
• Internship or project experience related to advertising technology, recommendation systems, or large-scale data analytics.

About TikTok

TikTok is a premier platform for short-form mobile video, committed to inspiring creativity and delivering joy. With global headquarters in Los Angeles and Singapore plus offices worldwide, it fosters an innovative and inclusive workplace culture emphasizing continuous learning, humility, resilience, and teamwork.

Diversity & Inclusion

TikTok promotes an inclusive environment where all employees' skills and perspectives are welcomed and appreciated. It strives to mirror the diverse global communities it serves and is passionate about celebrating diverse voices across the organization.