Research Scientist, TikTok E-Commerce Recommendation
TikTok
Seattle, WA · Posted November 13, 2026
Just laid off? Start here: a plan for the first weeks
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Where Seattle, WA ranks
Where Seattle, WA placed in our monthly rankings, month by month. Each month stays online at its own address.
November 2026
- #1Cities with the most jobs that do not need a four-year degree in the Pacific Northwest316 jobs · of 8
- #1Best cities for software and engineering jobs in the Pacific Northwest1,776 openings · of 14
- #2Best cities for energy and utilities pay after cost of living$180k · of 18
- #2Best cities for entry-level jobs that want AI skills in the Pacific Northwest17% · of 12
- #2Best cities for AI-skill jobs in the Pacific Northwest26% · of 17
- #2Best cities for software and engineering jobs in the West Coast1,776 openings · of 60
Pay compared with the market
This listing does not state pay. Across 49 open research scientist listings that state pay, the middle half runs $195,000 to $287,500 and the median is $231,500.
Listed pay is what employers advertise, not what people are paid.
How AI is used in this kind of work
AI use among medical scientists, except epidemiologists is little observed so far. Measured exposure for medical scientists, except epidemiologists: 4% (little observed).
Share of this job’s tasks that AI is already used for at work, from real usage. It is not a forecast of job loss, and a low number means no use seen yet. Source: Anthropic Economic Index.
TikTok has filed one layoff notice in the last twelve months, covering 250 workers, most recently August 2026. These are public filings with state labor departments, and an open role can sit alongside them. See the filings
Skills this job asks for
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About the job
Our E-commerce Recommendation Team is responsible for building up and scaling our recommendation system to provide the best experience for our TikTok users.
Responsibilities: • Conduct cutting-edge research in machine learning algorithms, such as retrieval and recommendation algorithms. • Participate in building large-scale (10 million to 100 million) e-commerce recommendation algorithms and systems, including commodity recommendations, live stream recommendations, short video recommendations etc in TikTok. • Build long and short term user interest models, analyze and extract relevant information from large amounts of various data and design algorithms to explore users' latent interests efficiently. • Apply machine learning algorithms to improve the different business scenarios, such as search ranking, natural language and video understanding, and trust and safety.
Minimum Qualifications: • MS/PhD in Computer Science, related technical field or equivalent industrial research experience. • 3+ years of working experience in one of the following fields: recommendation algorithm, online advertising, information retrieval, natural language processing, machine learning, large-scale data mining, or related fields.
Preferred Qualifications: • Familiar with at least one of the mainstream deep learning frameworks, like TensorFlow or PyTorch. • Passionate about solving complex and challenging problems