What are the responsibilities and job description for the Research Intern (AI-Native Databases) - 2026 Summer (PhD) position at ByteDance?
Responsibilities
About the Team
Join ByteDance’s database R&D team, where you’ll build and own cutting-edge database products supporting ByteDance’s global infrastructure. Our diverse portfolio includes relational databases, distributed caches, key-value stores, document databases, graph databases, wide-column stores, search engines, and multi-model databases.
About The Role
We are building the next-generation AI-native database systems—intelligent, multimodal, and designed for the era of large models. Our systems are not just data stores; they’re reasoning engines, retrieval platforms, and real-time memory for AI agents. As a Software Engineer or Researcher, you will be at the forefront of rethinking how databases work when built from the ground up for AI workloads. You’ll help create infrastructure that powers intelligent systems across TikTok, CapCut, and future applications that haven’t been imagined yet.
We are looking for talented individuals to join us for an internship in 2026. PhD Internships at ByteDance aim to provide students with the opportunity to actively contribute to our products and research, and to the organization's future plans and emerging technologies.
PhD internships at ByteDance provide students with the opportunity to actively contribute to our products and research, and to the organization's future plans and emerging technologies. Our dynamic internship experience blends hands-on learning, enriching community-building and development events, and collaboration with industry experts.
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis - we encourage you to apply early. Please state your availability clearly in your resume (Start date, End date).
Summer Start Dates:
Minimum Qualification(s):
【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Hourly) - Campus Intern
The hourly rate range for this position in the selected city is $57- $57.
Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Interns have day one access to health insurance, life insurance, wellbeing benefits and more. Interns also receive 10 paid holidays per year and paid sick time (56 hours if hired in first half of year, 40 if hired in second half of year). Interns who are not working 100% remote may also be eligible for housing allowance.
The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.
For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates:
Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:
Founded in 2012, ByteDance's mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. With a suite of more than a dozen products, including TikTok, Lemon8, CapCut and Pico as well as platforms specific to the China market, including Toutiao, Douyin, and Xigua, ByteDance has made it easier and more fun for people to connect with, consume, and create content.
Why Join ByteDance
Inspiring creativity is at the core of ByteDance's mission. Our innovative products are built to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect – and our global, diverse teams make that possible. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and enrich life - a mission we work towards every day.
As ByteDancers, we strive to do great things with great people. We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. By constantly iterating and fostering an "Always Day 1" mindset, we achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our Company, and our users. When we create and grow together, the possibilities are limitless. Join us.
Diversity & Inclusion
ByteDance is committed to creating an inclusive space where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. Our platform connects people from across the globe and so does our workplace. At ByteDance, our mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. To achieve that goal, we are committed to celebrating our diverse voices and to creating an environment that reflects the many communities we reach. We are passionate about this and hope you are too.
Reasonable Accommodation
ByteDance is committed to providing reasonable accommodations in our recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, sincerely held religious beliefs or other reasons protected by applicable laws. If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at https://tinyurl.com/RA-request
About the Team
Join ByteDance’s database R&D team, where you’ll build and own cutting-edge database products supporting ByteDance’s global infrastructure. Our diverse portfolio includes relational databases, distributed caches, key-value stores, document databases, graph databases, wide-column stores, search engines, and multi-model databases.
About The Role
We are building the next-generation AI-native database systems—intelligent, multimodal, and designed for the era of large models. Our systems are not just data stores; they’re reasoning engines, retrieval platforms, and real-time memory for AI agents. As a Software Engineer or Researcher, you will be at the forefront of rethinking how databases work when built from the ground up for AI workloads. You’ll help create infrastructure that powers intelligent systems across TikTok, CapCut, and future applications that haven’t been imagined yet.
We are looking for talented individuals to join us for an internship in 2026. PhD Internships at ByteDance aim to provide students with the opportunity to actively contribute to our products and research, and to the organization's future plans and emerging technologies.
PhD internships at ByteDance provide students with the opportunity to actively contribute to our products and research, and to the organization's future plans and emerging technologies. Our dynamic internship experience blends hands-on learning, enriching community-building and development events, and collaboration with industry experts.
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis - we encourage you to apply early. Please state your availability clearly in your resume (Start date, End date).
Summer Start Dates:
- May 11th, 2026
- May 18th, 2026
- May 26th, 2026
- June 8th, 2026
- June 22nd, 2026
- Develop kernel modules or features for AI-native database systems.
- Solve unique, large-scale, highly complex cloud infrastructure problems
- Partner with PMs and engineers from different teams on building backend support for AI-native database service products
- Participate in technical discussions related to team's product and engineering work
Minimum Qualification(s):
- Currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or other related fields
- Knowledge of database kernel, distributed system, query processing and optimization, multi-threaded programming
- Experience coding in C/C , Golang, Java, Python
- Must obtain work authorization in the country of employment at the time of hire, and maintain ongoing work authorization during employment.
- Demonstrated software engineering experience from previous internship, work experience, coding competitions, or publications.
- Curiosity towards new technologies and entrepreneurship.
- High levels of creativity and quick problem-solving capabilities.
- Experience with open-source systems such as Faiss, Milvus, DuckDB, ClickHouse, TiKV, RocksDB.
- Publications at top-tier conferences (e.g., SIGMOD, VLDB, NeurIPS, MLSys, ICDE).
- Familiarity with GCP, AWS, or Azure’s database and AI integration strategies.
- Prior contributions to RAG, memory-augmented models, or self-tuning database components.
【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Hourly) - Campus Intern
The hourly rate range for this position in the selected city is $57- $57.
Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Interns have day one access to health insurance, life insurance, wellbeing benefits and more. Interns also receive 10 paid holidays per year and paid sick time (56 hours if hired in first half of year, 40 if hired in second half of year). Interns who are not working 100% remote may also be eligible for housing allowance.
The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.
For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates:
Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:
- Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;
- Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and
- Exercising sound judgment.
Founded in 2012, ByteDance's mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. With a suite of more than a dozen products, including TikTok, Lemon8, CapCut and Pico as well as platforms specific to the China market, including Toutiao, Douyin, and Xigua, ByteDance has made it easier and more fun for people to connect with, consume, and create content.
Why Join ByteDance
Inspiring creativity is at the core of ByteDance's mission. Our innovative products are built to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect – and our global, diverse teams make that possible. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and enrich life - a mission we work towards every day.
As ByteDancers, we strive to do great things with great people. We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. By constantly iterating and fostering an "Always Day 1" mindset, we achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our Company, and our users. When we create and grow together, the possibilities are limitless. Join us.
Diversity & Inclusion
ByteDance is committed to creating an inclusive space where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. Our platform connects people from across the globe and so does our workplace. At ByteDance, our mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. To achieve that goal, we are committed to celebrating our diverse voices and to creating an environment that reflects the many communities we reach. We are passionate about this and hope you are too.
Reasonable Accommodation
ByteDance is committed to providing reasonable accommodations in our recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, sincerely held religious beliefs or other reasons protected by applicable laws. If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at https://tinyurl.com/RA-request