I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at TikTok (London, England) in June 2022
Interview
I applied directly and the recruiter sent me an invitation for a technical interview directly (skipping the screening call).
I did well in the interview and answered all of the questions. Few days later I got the automated rejection email with no feedback.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
ML: how would you design a recommender system for TikTok feed? we talked for half an hour about candidate generation and ranking and how to scale this.
What metrics would you use for evaluating candidates generation step? the answer is recall.
Coding interview: Reverse a linked list, and reverse a section of the linked list given two indices.
three rounds, each has coding + ml basic + resume related questions
understand all the details in resume is important, since might go very deep down the project you have worked on
The first round was mainly a CV walkthrough.
The second round focused in depth on one specific project.
Both rounds also included LeetCode medium-level problems.
The third round was with the hiring manager with both project and problems for their business.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at TikTok (San Jose, CA) in Mar 2026
Interview
one hour first round tiktok usds phone screen interview. past projects questions, leetcode mid questions, and machine learning, deep learning, large language model questions. And then ask the interviewer questions.