Research Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at TikTok with 3 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 100% positive. To compare, the company-average is 37.4% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Here are the most commonly searched roles for interview reports -
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at TikTok in Feb 2022
Interview
The overall experience was quite negative. There was no prior communication about how many steps there are in the process in total or remaining. They took 3 phone screens over a month and when asked to speed up the process, sent out a rejection.
There were mostly Leetcode questions and ML theory questions.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Leetcode Questions:
Q. In a 2D matrix, find the minimum sum when going from top left to the bottom right and only taking steps right or down.
Q. Find the length of the longest path (between any two nodes) in a binary tree.
ML Questions:
Q. How does SVM work?
Q. How does BERT/Transformer work?
Q. What to do if the length of the sentence is greater than BERT limit?
Q. How does momentum work in gradient descent?
Q. How is RoBERTa different from BERT?
I am a PhD and they asked a bachelor guy to interview me, stupid questions like asking me to solve his own project problems. Overall not a good interview if you are looking for a deep research oriented group
Standard process: introduction + technical screening + 4x 1 hour interview + follow-up with hiring manager Technical screening was a mix of domain knowledge + leetcode interview, also in the area. 4 hours interview were on 4 different subjects relevant to my team. Rather Average difficulty. On two interviews, I had leetcode problems to solve
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Knapsack problem, but in the context of the domain
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at TikTok (Singapore) in Aug 2023
Interview
Three rounds of technical interviews, including introducing your research, publications, and the online code test (leetcode). Each round of interveiws takes about 1 hour, and the results generally releases within three work days after the interviews.
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
What's your research experience in computer vision?