Backend Software Engineer Intern (TikTok- PGC-Digital Content Center) - 2027 Summer
TikTok· Entertainment· Jul 29, 2026 · 3mo agoPosted 90 days ago
San Jose, CA
In office
Internship
Intern
$52K–$78K est.
Before you apply
Ghost Signal:
Open 90 days.
Job description
About the Team
Our team builds a global copyright protection platform that translates legal requirements, business policies, and operational workflows into reliable and scalable systems. The platform supports complaint intake, regional routing, human review, enforcement, notifications, creator appeals, rightsholder rebuttals, and proactive content identification.
You will work on complex event-driven systems and multi-region distributed architectures, addressing real-world challenges in consistency, idempotency, cross-region routing, reliability, and compliance.
What We Offer
- Direct involvement in the design and development of TikTok's global copyright protection core systems, with business impact reaching hundreds of millions of users worldwide.
- Hands-on experience with Go microservices architecture, event-driven architecture, and multi-data-center distributed systems.
- Comprehensive mentorship program (1:1 Mentor) with a clear growth path — full-cycle participation from requirement analysis to production deployment.
- A collaborative, cross-functional environment working with product, algorithm, and front-end teams, enabling rapid cross-domain learning.
- Competitive compensation and benefits; outstanding interns/new grads will receive full-time conversion opportunities.
We are looking for talented individuals to join us for an internship. Our internship program offers students hands-on experience, industry exposure, and opportunities to apply their knowledge to real-world challenges while building a strong foundation for personal and professional growth.
Interns will gain practical experience, explore potential career paths, and participate in social events, learning programs, and development workshops alongside industry professionals.
Candidates may apply to a maximum of two positions across Our Company and its affiliates globally. Applications will be considered in the order they are submitted.
Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, so we encourage you to apply early. Please clearly state your availability in your resume, including your start and end dates.
Responsibilities
- Participate in the architecture design and development of core backend services for the copyright protection platform, writing high-quality Go code across modules including complaint intake, audit scheduling, enforcement execution, and appeal management.
- Contribute to the design and implementation of event-driven architecture, building high-availability event flow pipelines based on EventBus/MQ that ensure reliable delivery and eventual consistency across cross-service business workflows.
- Design, optimize, and maintain databases (MySQL/NoSQL) supporting efficient storage and querying at billion-scale data volumes, ensuring data integrity and consistency.
- Develop and maintain RESTful APIs and RPC interfaces, ensuring efficient and secure data exchange between front-end applications, internal platforms, and external systems.
- Participate in system design and data synchronization strategies for multi-DC (Multi-Data Center / Multi-VGeo) architecture, solving distributed challenges such as cross-region replication lag and read-after-write consistency.
- Monitor and optimize system performance, identify and resolve potential bottlenecks, and improve system throughput and response speed.
- Quickly respond to and resolve production environment issues, ensuring system stability and business continuity.
- Collaborate closely with product managers, front-end engineers, algorithm teams, and other stakeholders to ensure high-quality and on-time project delivery.
Minimum Qualifications:
- Currently pursuing an Undergraduate/Master degree in Software Development, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
- Able to commit to working for 12 weeks during the Summer of 2027.
- Proficient in at least one backend programming language such as Go, Java, or C++; Go experience is a plus.
- Familiar with common database technologies such as MySQL, Redis, and MongoDB; understanding of index optimization and basic performance tuning.
- Understanding of RESTful API design and development; familiarity with RPC frameworks (e.g., Thrift, gRPC) is a plus; familiar with Linux-based operating systems and common commands; basic Shell scripting ability.
- Strong problem-solving and logical thinking abilities, passion for new technologies, and a quick learning ability.
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills with a strong team-oriented mindset.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Understanding of microservices architecture and related technologies such as Docker, Kubernetes, etc.
- Experience in developing large-scale distributed systems; understanding of message queues (e.g., Kafka, EventBus), distributed transactions, and eventual consistency.
- Familiarity with Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) or publish-subscribe patterns, with relevant hands-on experience.
- Interest in or knowledge of copyright protection, content safety, or multimedia processing (e.g., audio/video fingerprinting, content matching).
- Knowledge of Machine Learning Engineering (MLE) concepts and practices, including model training, deployment, and evaluation.
- Open-source contributions, technical blog posts, or competitive programming awards are a plus.
As a condition of employment, all successful candidates must be able to establish authorization to work in the United States. For this position, the Company does not provide sponsorship or any immigration-related benefits.
By submitting an application for this role, you accept and agree to our global applicant privacy policy, which may be accessed here: careers.tiktok.com
Application prep
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Keywords to mirror
gojavaapidockerkubernetesmachine learning
- Platform
- tiktok
- Effort
- medium