Research Engineer, AI/LLM/HPC Network
TikTok
Seattle, WA · Posted November 13, 2026
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Where Seattle, WA ranks
Where Seattle, WA placed in our monthly rankings, month by month. Each month stays online at its own address.
November 2026
- #1Cities with the most jobs that do not need a four-year degree in the Pacific Northwest316 jobs · of 8
- #1Best cities for software and engineering jobs in the Pacific Northwest1,776 openings · of 14
- #2Best cities for energy and utilities pay after cost of living$180k · of 18
- #2Best cities for entry-level jobs that want AI skills in the Pacific Northwest17% · of 12
- #2Best cities for AI-skill jobs in the Pacific Northwest26% · of 17
- #2Best cities for software and engineering jobs in the West Coast1,776 openings · of 60
Rankings about data & analytics jobs
- Best cities for data and analytics jobs #1 New York (1,713 openings)
- Best cities for data and analytics pay after cost of living #1 Foster ($232k)
- Most requested AI skills in data and analytics jobs #1 Machine learning engineering (17.1%)
- AI tools named most often in data and analytics jobs #1 Databricks (7.6%)
- Employers with the most data and analytics jobs #1 Amazon (711 roles)
Data & Analytics jobs · Top Data & Analytics employers · All rankings
Pay compared with the market
This listing does not state pay. Across 40 open research engineer listings that state pay, the middle half runs $190,000 to $280,000 and the median is $250,000.
Listed pay is what employers advertise, not what people are paid.
How AI is used in this kind of work
Among computer and information research scientists, AI is already used for a large share of the tasks. Measured exposure for computer and information research scientists: 34% (high).
Share of this job’s tasks that AI is already used for at work, from real usage. It is not a forecast of job loss, and a low number means no use seen yet. Source: Anthropic Economic Index.
TikTok has filed one layoff notice in the last twelve months, covering 250 workers, most recently August 2026. These are public filings with state labor departments, and an open role can sit alongside them. See the filings
Skills this job asks for
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About the job
The Networking team brings together innovative ideas and technologies from network architecture, software defined networking (SDN), network virtualization, switch software and hardware co-design, and high-speed networking, to create hyperscale data-center networking solutions that power several of the most popular apps of the world such as Douyin and TikTok which serve hundreds of millions of users around the globe.
The Networking team is responsible for designing, building, and operating the global, intelligent network infrastructure to meet the requirements of high availability, scalability, and high-performance. By joining this team, you will gain marketable software development and/or network operation experiences in data center networking at massive scale.
Responsibilities: - Design, implementation and deployment of high-speed network technologies to support AI/LLM applications. - Design and development of platforms/systems for monitoring, analysis and diagnosis of large scale AI/LLM network. - Research and development of high-performance AI communication framework, network protocol stacks, and codesign optimization of host-network-application to improve the scalability, reliability and performance of AI/LLM network. - Building next generation AI network infrastructure supporting large scale heterogeneous network hardware with innovative and deployable solutions.
Minimum Qualification(s) - Bachelor or higher degree in computer science, electronic engineering, network engineering or related fields. - Proficiency in computer network and network programming. - Proficiency in one or several mainstream programming languages, including C/C++, Python, Go and so on. - Be familiar with the latest advances in the area of high-speed network systems, including RDMA, congestion control, AI network optimization and so on.
Preferred Qualification(s) - Experience in developing high-performance communication frameworks (including NCCL, MPI and RPC libraries) is a plus. - Experience in developing software systems for AI network diagnosis and performance optimization is a plus.