TikTok

Machine Learning Engineer Interview Experience - United States

October 4, 2025

Neutral ExperienceNo Offer

Process

Coding: One medium-hard problem
System Design:
- Two rounds focusing on ML fundamentals (e.g., what is a Transformer, what is an attention model).
- Questions may also cover recommendation systems or system designs related to their own team's work.

Stop at System Design. Background is not fit.

Questions

What is an attention model?

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 113 interview experiences for the TikTok Machine Learning Engineer role in United States.

Success Rate

Pass Rate

TikTok's interview process for their Machine Learning Engineer roles in the United States is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.

Experience Rating

Positive36%

Neutral44%

Negative19%

Candidates reported having good feelings for TikTok's Machine Learning Engineer interview process in United States.

TikTok Interview Questions

Subarray Sum Equals K

Medium

Determine the total number of continuous subarrays within a given array that sum up to a specific target value, k.

ArraysSliding Windows

Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters

Medium

Find the length of the longest substring within a given string that contains no repeating characters. The substring must be contiguous.

StringsSliding Windows

Generate Parentheses

Medium

Given a number 'n', generate all possible well-formed (balanced) parentheses strings of length 2*n. For instance, if n=3, you need to create all valid combinations like '((()))', '(()())', etc.

RecursionStrings