I applied online. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at TikTok
Interview
HR screening + 3 rounds of technical interviews. Each round include resume deep dive, focusing on past research experience and innovations in transformer-based models. Then a medium to hard level coding.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about a time you made an innovative solution to a ML problem.
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.