At TikTok, we're dedicated to discovering and nurturing early career talents. One of the ways we do this is by going straight to the source: students completing their higher education and beginning to define their professional goals. That's why this July, we worked with the University of Sydney in Australia to sponsor Codefest.
At TikTok, we're dedicated to discovering and nurturing early career talents. One of the ways we do this is by going straight to the source: students completing their higher education and beginning to define their professional goals. That's why this July, we worked with the University of Sydney in Australia to sponsor Codefest.
At TikTok, we're dedicated to discovering and nurturing early career talents. One of the ways we do this is by going straight to the source: students completing their higher education and beginning to define their professional goals. That's why this July, we worked with the University of Sydney in Australia to sponsor Codefest.
Codefest is an annual coding competition where students from the school's graduate program come together to sharpen their skills, as well as connect with peers and hear presentations from industry leaders in the fields of technology, Research & Development, and AI. Members of TikTok's DataAILab team attended Codefest to talk about creativity in coding, how their work impacts every aspect of TikTok's platform, and what they're looking for in Early Career hires.
"Codefest sets a stage for university students to tackle real-world problems, ranging from finding a parking spot to translating sign languages," says Maisie Wang, a human resources partner on the team. She helped run a booth at Codefest and connected with attendees to chat about day-to-day life at TikTok. "Codefest bridges the gap between academy and industry. The students get to think about how to convert the knowledge and skills they learn at school to innovative solutions that contribute to our community.
"Employees that work on DataAILab are responsible for developing and maintaining the series of infrastructure systems that make TikTok work. These include the product recommendation algorithms, large language models, and the transcoding and decoding involved in streaming and uploading. We are also responsible for Risk Engineering & Research, Big Data R&D, and Open Platform technology." The team hiring in the Sydney office has a particular focus on video architecture.
This work is what brought together TikTok with the University of Sydney. Professor Zhiyong Wang, who teaches computer science at the school, connected with TikTok to discuss the theme of 2024 Codefest; "Creativity in Coding". Professor Wang invited TikTok to participate in the event, because creativity is something the DataAILab team infuses into everything they do.
"Not only is the technology we build innovative in its own right," says Maisie Wang, "but without a very stable infrastructure built out, the creativity that all our users display would have nothing to live on!"
Going into the specifics of what the Sydney DataAILab team has to offer was Leo Niu, a Site Reliability Engineer. Niu gave a presentation to students about his work and TikTok's goals for the team.
"On a granular level, we develop and maintain systems to allow users to watch videos and livestreams smoothly and on demand," says Niu. His presentation touched on the creation of TikTok's livestreaming capabilities, and an overview of global video systems, where everything from the ability to upload to content, to pressing play and pause are carefully constructed. "In a broader sense, we provide the best possible user experience."
Leo Niu presenting to students at Codefest.
He described meeting a group of students working on a project to utilize AI technology to translate Auslan (Australian Sign Language) into English. Coincidentally, the DataAILab team is also working on projects to improve AI translations. This is one of many instances where Codefest gave TikTok teammates a chance to meet prospective early career talent who were passionate about the same things they were.
"It's very rare for students to have an opportunity to ask employees of a platform they admire in-depth questions about the work," he says. Not only did the work the DataAILab team shared at Codefest interest students, so did TikTok's culture and early career opportunities.
"Young people care about their own growth," says Mingfei Hao, another video architecture teammate. "TikTok provides opportunities for them to grow even in an internship or entry-level position. They'll be mentored, and given the freedom to direct and cultivate their own career."
"For TikTok, we are always talent-hungry, especially for talents with strong coding skills," says Niu. "Codefest serves a great opportunity for us to connect with early career talent and introduce them to the innovative work we do"
Interested in a career on TikTok's DataAILab team? We're growing our team in Sydney now. Explore open roles here .
