I applied online. I interviewed at TikTok (Los Angeles, CA) in Mar 2026
Interview
It's an interview for a data science position. In my first interview, after I introduced myself, the interviewer began to ask in-depth questions about the projects on my resume. The whole process went very quickly.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Conceptual Questions: What is the loss function for logistic regression? Why use logarithmic loss instead of mean squared error?
SQL1: Examine the statistics of video upload events from non-US countries within a specific time period.
The focus is on SELECT, WHERE, GROUP BY, ORDER BY, and handling the case sensitivity of the `country` field, requiring the use of the UPPER function to ensure correct filtering.
SQL2: Count the daily active users in the US region on a specific date, excluding high-risk users.
This mainly examines the use of JOIN and the details of COUNT(DISTINCT user_id), avoiding inflated data due to direct COUNT(*).
SQL3: Count the number of viewing events from non-US countries today and rank them based on the average of fraudulent sessions over the past 30 days. The difficulty lies in using CTE modularization to handle two independent logics, proficient use of RANK() and OVER() window functions, and offset calculations for date functions such as CURDATE() and INTERVAL.
A former colleague referred me to the Data Scientist position at TikTok, which kicked off the interview process. The technical screen included a question about designing an A/B test for a ranking model, followed by an SQL challenge related to user sessions. The funny part was that the SQL problem was a twist on one I had been grinding through on PracHub just a few days prior. After some behavioral interviews, I received an offer, but ultimately decided to decline as it didn't align with my goals.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Walk me through how you'd design an A/B test for a new ranking model on the For You feed, and how you'd pick guardrail metrics.
Given a sessions table (user_id, session_start, session_end, country), write SQL to find the users whose average session length grew the most week-over-week.
I applied online. I interviewed at TikTok (London, England)
Interview
one medium level sql test and an open question
Since i'm not familiar with business context(though i actually spent time preparing AB test and causal inference), i didn't get what i should answer.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
if tiktok shop is going to launch in Netherland, how to evaluate it before AB test