TikTok
Applied Scientist, TikTok E-Commerce - Conversational AI, USDS
TikTok, San Jose, California, United States, 95199
Applied Scientist, TikTok E-Commerce - Conversational AI, USDS
Responsibilities
About the Team The future of e-commerce customer service is intelligent, efficient, and AI-driven. Our team is dedicated to replacing traditional human-agent customer service with an advanced AI-powered conversational system that provides instant, intelligent, and seamless support for TikTok's global e-commerce platform. By leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) and NLP, we are building an AI customer service system that can understand user queries, resolve disputes, guide transactions, and enhance the overall shopping experience without the need for human intervention.
Our cutting-edge AI is designed to handle complex customer interactions, including answering product inquiries, resolving order issues, processing refunds, and assisting sellers with operational tasks. Through LLM post-training, we ensure that our AI assistant is continuously learning and improving, providing more accurate, context-aware, and human-like interactions.
By joining us, you will be at the forefront of transforming customer service in e-commerce, helping build an AI system that understands, adapts, and provides intelligent solutions—all while reducing costs and improving efficiency for merchants and the platform.
What You Will Do
Design and implement an AI-driven conversational customer service agent that can handle e-commerce inquiries, complaints, refunds, dispute resolutions, and logistical issues, replacing traditional human customer service agents.
Apply state-of-the-art LLM post-training techniques, such as instruction tuning, reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), and continual learning, to optimize AI customer service responses with minimal labeled data.
Identify challenging customer service interactions, such as policy clarifications, dispute handling, and multi-turn complaint resolution, and construct specialized datasets to enhance AI training.
Build AI models capable of handling customer service interactions across multiple languages and cultural contexts, ensuring accurate translation and appropriate responses for a diverse global audience.
Work on model compression, quantization, and efficient inference techniques to ensure the AI customer service assistant can run at scale with low latency and high reliability.
In order to enhance collaboration and cross-functional partnerships, among other things, at this time, our organization follows a hybrid work schedule that requires employees to work in the office 3 days a week, or as directed by their manager/department. We regularly review our hybrid work model, and the specific requirements may change at any time.
Qualifications Minimum Qualifications:
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related technical field
3+ working experience in one of the following fields: machine learning, NLP, and computer vision
Experience with software development in at least one of the following programming languages: C++, Python, Go, Java
Preferred Qualifications:
LLM Development & Post-Training Expertise: Experience in fine-tuning, distillation, or reinforcement learning of large language models for conversational AI applications.
Multilingual AI Development: Proficiency in multilingual NLP, machine translation, and cross-lingual dialogue modeling.
E-commerce Business Acumen: Understanding of e-commerce policies, dispute resolution workflows, and merchant-buyer interactions to enhance AI service design.
Advanced NLP & Deep Learning: Strong grasp of AI agents, retrieval augmented generation, mixture of experts, sparse attention, reinforcement learning, inference time scaling etc. for improving AI dialogue quality.
Scalability & Efficiency: Experience in distributed model training, low-latency inference, and edge AI for large-scale customer service applications.
About USDS TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. Our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. U.S. Data Security (“USDS”) is a subsidiary of TikTok in the U.S. This new, security‑first division was created to bring heightened focus and governance to our data protection policies and content assurance protocols to keep U.S. users safe. Our focus is on providing oversight and protection of the TikTok platform and U.S. user data, so millions of Americans can continue turning to TikTok to learn something new, earn a living, express themselves creatively, or be entertained. The teams within USDS that deliver on this commitment daily span across Trust & Safety, Security & Privacy, Engineering, User & Product Ops, Corporate Functions and more.
Why Join Us Inspiring creativity is at the core of TikTok's mission. Our innovative product is built to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect – and our global, diverse teams make that possible. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and bring joy - a mission we work towards every day. We strive to do great things with great people. We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. Every challenge is an opportunity to learn and innovate as one team. We're resilient and embrace challenges as they come. By constantly iterating and fostering an "Always Day 1" mindset, we achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our company, and our users. When we create and grow together, the possibilities are limitless. Join us.
Diversity & Inclusion TikTok is committed to creating an inclusive space where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. Our platform connects people from across the globe and so does our workplace. At TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. To achieve that goal, we are committed to celebrating our diverse voices and to creating an environment that reflects the many communities we reach. We are passionate about this and hope you are too.
USDS Reasonable Accommodation USDS is committed to providing reasonable accommodations in our recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, sincerely held religious beliefs or other reasons protected by applicable laws. If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at https://tinyurl.com/USDS-RA
Job Information Compensation Description (Annually) The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $136,800 - $359,720 annually. Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units. Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others. Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure). The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice. For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates: Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment: 1. Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues; 2. Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and 3. Exercising sound judgment.
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About the Team The future of e-commerce customer service is intelligent, efficient, and AI-driven. Our team is dedicated to replacing traditional human-agent customer service with an advanced AI-powered conversational system that provides instant, intelligent, and seamless support for TikTok's global e-commerce platform. By leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) and NLP, we are building an AI customer service system that can understand user queries, resolve disputes, guide transactions, and enhance the overall shopping experience without the need for human intervention.
Our cutting-edge AI is designed to handle complex customer interactions, including answering product inquiries, resolving order issues, processing refunds, and assisting sellers with operational tasks. Through LLM post-training, we ensure that our AI assistant is continuously learning and improving, providing more accurate, context-aware, and human-like interactions.
By joining us, you will be at the forefront of transforming customer service in e-commerce, helping build an AI system that understands, adapts, and provides intelligent solutions—all while reducing costs and improving efficiency for merchants and the platform.
What You Will Do
Design and implement an AI-driven conversational customer service agent that can handle e-commerce inquiries, complaints, refunds, dispute resolutions, and logistical issues, replacing traditional human customer service agents.
Apply state-of-the-art LLM post-training techniques, such as instruction tuning, reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), and continual learning, to optimize AI customer service responses with minimal labeled data.
Identify challenging customer service interactions, such as policy clarifications, dispute handling, and multi-turn complaint resolution, and construct specialized datasets to enhance AI training.
Build AI models capable of handling customer service interactions across multiple languages and cultural contexts, ensuring accurate translation and appropriate responses for a diverse global audience.
Work on model compression, quantization, and efficient inference techniques to ensure the AI customer service assistant can run at scale with low latency and high reliability.
In order to enhance collaboration and cross-functional partnerships, among other things, at this time, our organization follows a hybrid work schedule that requires employees to work in the office 3 days a week, or as directed by their manager/department. We regularly review our hybrid work model, and the specific requirements may change at any time.
Qualifications Minimum Qualifications:
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related technical field
3+ working experience in one of the following fields: machine learning, NLP, and computer vision
Experience with software development in at least one of the following programming languages: C++, Python, Go, Java
Preferred Qualifications:
LLM Development & Post-Training Expertise: Experience in fine-tuning, distillation, or reinforcement learning of large language models for conversational AI applications.
Multilingual AI Development: Proficiency in multilingual NLP, machine translation, and cross-lingual dialogue modeling.
E-commerce Business Acumen: Understanding of e-commerce policies, dispute resolution workflows, and merchant-buyer interactions to enhance AI service design.
Advanced NLP & Deep Learning: Strong grasp of AI agents, retrieval augmented generation, mixture of experts, sparse attention, reinforcement learning, inference time scaling etc. for improving AI dialogue quality.
Scalability & Efficiency: Experience in distributed model training, low-latency inference, and edge AI for large-scale customer service applications.
About USDS TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. Our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. U.S. Data Security (“USDS”) is a subsidiary of TikTok in the U.S. This new, security‑first division was created to bring heightened focus and governance to our data protection policies and content assurance protocols to keep U.S. users safe. Our focus is on providing oversight and protection of the TikTok platform and U.S. user data, so millions of Americans can continue turning to TikTok to learn something new, earn a living, express themselves creatively, or be entertained. The teams within USDS that deliver on this commitment daily span across Trust & Safety, Security & Privacy, Engineering, User & Product Ops, Corporate Functions and more.
Why Join Us Inspiring creativity is at the core of TikTok's mission. Our innovative product is built to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect – and our global, diverse teams make that possible. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and bring joy - a mission we work towards every day. We strive to do great things with great people. We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. Every challenge is an opportunity to learn and innovate as one team. We're resilient and embrace challenges as they come. By constantly iterating and fostering an "Always Day 1" mindset, we achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our company, and our users. When we create and grow together, the possibilities are limitless. Join us.
Diversity & Inclusion TikTok is committed to creating an inclusive space where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. Our platform connects people from across the globe and so does our workplace. At TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. To achieve that goal, we are committed to celebrating our diverse voices and to creating an environment that reflects the many communities we reach. We are passionate about this and hope you are too.
USDS Reasonable Accommodation USDS is committed to providing reasonable accommodations in our recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, sincerely held religious beliefs or other reasons protected by applicable laws. If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at https://tinyurl.com/USDS-RA
Job Information Compensation Description (Annually) The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $136,800 - $359,720 annually. Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units. Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others. Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure). The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice. For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates: Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment: 1. Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues; 2. Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and 3. Exercising sound judgment.
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