Senior Research Scientist, Large Language Model - Privacy

$194,000 - $355,000/Yr

Tiktok - San Jose, CA

Full-time - Senior

San Jose, CA

Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services

About the position

TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video, and our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. As part of this mission, we prioritize privacy in our product design and implementation. The Privacy Innovation (PI) Lab has been established to explore the next frontier of privacy technology and theory in the digitalized world. We provide key insights and technical solutions on privacy-related innovation for all TikTok products, collaborating with worldwide technical and academic communities to promote a privacy-friendly digital experience. As a Senior Research Scientist in the PI Lab, you will have the opportunity to conduct advanced research on privacy technology and theory, tackling critical industrial challenges that serve billions of TikTok users. You will work closely with product and engineering teams to understand privacy requirements and apply your research findings to product prototyping. Your role will also involve advocating for research findings through written reports and presentations, representing the PI Lab in external technical and academic communities. We are looking for highly experienced and capable researchers to join our team, where you will collaborate with influential researchers globally and contribute to the development of innovative privacy solutions. This position is not just about compliance; it’s about creating a trusted environment that respects users' privacy choices while enabling technological innovation.

Responsibilities

• Design and execute technical and theoretic research on critical industrial challenges related to privacy innovation.
• Work with product teams to understand key privacy requirements from TikTok's product family and provide technical consulting on privacy-related features.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to apply technical achievements from research to product prototyping.
• Advocate for research findings to diverse audiences through written reports and verbal presentations.
• Represent the PI Lab and its work in external technical and academic communities.

Requirements

• PhD in Privacy, Security, Machine Learning, Cryptography, or a related field.
• Demonstrated expertise in privacy-enhanced techniques (PET) and related technical domains, including data and identity anonymization, differential privacy, secure multi-party computation, federated machine learning, on-device machine learning, interpretable AI, and privacy-preserving technology for large language models (LLM).
• Proven records of publications and awards in top security and other related academic conferences.
• Ability to develop research questions from critical industrial challenges on privacy innovation and knowledge of using technical tools for required experiments and proof-of-concept prototyping.
• Ability to work globally and collaboratively within a team and with external researchers.

Benefits

• 100% premium coverage for employee medical insurance, approximately 75% premium coverage for dependents.
• Health Savings Account (HSA) with a company match.
• Dental, Vision, Short/Long term Disability, Basic Life, Voluntary Life and AD&D insurance plans.
• Flexible Spending Account (FSA) options for Health Care, Limited Purpose, and Dependent Care.
• 10 paid holidays per year plus 17 days of Paid Personal Time Off (PPTO) and 10 paid sick days per year.
• 12 weeks of paid Parental leave and 8 weeks of paid Supplemental Disability.
• Mental and emotional health benefits through EAP and Lyra.
• 401K company match, gym and cellphone service reimbursements.