I applied through official website for ML Engineer (Tiktok Multimedia) PhD Intern Summer 2025. The first round was coding round. ~55 mins of coding and then 5 mins of discussion about my interests. It was a hard problem (outside of Leetcode). I was not able to give the most optimized solution, but I spoke out loud and somehow still got invited for the next round.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Hard coding problem where height of dam was given and height of river bed was given (increasing order), and we have to decide where to put the dam so that the capacity of water stored is maximized.
The interview process consisted of multiple rounds including an online assessment, technical phone screens, and virtual onsite interviews. The questions focused on machine learning fundamentals, coding challenges, and system design. The recruiters were responsive and kept me updated throughout the entire process.
Asked heavily about my resume, mainly focused on the projects I did that had overlapped areas with the team. Did an easy coding question on calculating a ML metric and asked about how to optimize the solution.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What was a metric I used in my recommender system project.
I applied online. I interviewed at TikTok (Singapore) in Feb 2026
Interview
The structure for both rounds is as follows:
20 mins deep dive into resume, explanation of personal projects & past experience, 20 mins testing about AIML concepts, 20 mins for leetcode medium
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Explain what would happen if bias was removed from the equation during backpropogation
