I applied through university. I interviewed at TikTok in Oct 2025
Interview
Asked about past projects and work experience in detail. Merge sort, a Medium-Hard DP problem. A case problem with designing a model to recommend items for tiktok shop. Interview was in Chinese.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Compute numbers of ways you can put N queens on a N*N chess table.
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.