Llm Engineer Jobs in California
Llm engineer jobs in California sit at the center of one of the most active AI hiring markets in the world, with demand concentrated in foundation model development, retrieval-augmented generation, and enterprise AI deployment at every level from junior engineer to principal. San Francisco, San Jose, and Los Angeles account for the heaviest share of openings, anchored by employers like Google, Meta, and Salesforce, which maintain large California AI research and engineering teams. The most sought-after specializations are fine-tuning and alignment, inference optimization, and LLM-powered application architecture. Find a role that fits below and apply directly.
Find Llm Engineer JobsOverview
Open roles36
Top employerTikTok
Top citySan Jose, CA
Cities hiring8
Work type63% On-site
Top industryTechnology
Showing 4 of 36+ Llm Engineer jobs
LLM Post-training Engineer Graduate (Research & Product) - 2027 Start
We won't show you this job again
Added 1d ago
TikTok
LLM Post-training Engineer Graduate (Research & Product) - 2027 Start
San Jose, California
Added 1d ago
Senior Research Engineer, LLM Training & Post-Training
We won't show you this job again
Added 2d ago
Lightning AI
Senior Research Engineer, LLM Training & Post-Training
San Francisco, California
Added 2d ago
AI Infra Engineer Graduate (Recommendation & LLM) 2027 Start (PhD)
We won't show you this job again
Added 2d ago
TikTok
AI Infra Engineer Graduate (Recommendation & LLM) 2027 Start (PhD)
San Jose, California
Added 2d ago
AI Infra Engineer Graduate (Recommendation & LLM) - 2027 Start
We won't show you this job again
Added 2d ago
TikTok
AI Infra Engineer Graduate (Recommendation & LLM) - 2027 Start
San Jose, California
Added 2d ago
Added 1d ago
LLM Post-training Engineer Graduate (Research & Product) - 2027 Start
TikTok·San Jose, California
Job functions:
$128k - $317k/yr
Bachelor's degree
10,000+ employees
Job Description
Technology
LLM Post-training Engineer Graduate (Research & Product) - 2027 Start
Location
:
San Jose
Employment Type
:
Regular
Job Code
:
A212612
Responsibilities
About the team
The Multimedia AI team at TikTok focuses on building, researching, and applying Large Language Models (LLMs) to power our global products. We believe the most impactful problems in AI arise at the intersection of research and real-world deployment—and post-training is where that intersection is sharpest.
We are looking for talented individuals to join our team. As a graduate, you will get opportunities to pursue bold ideas, tackle complex challenges, and unlock limitless growth.
Successful candidates must be able to commit to an onboarding date by the end of the year. Please state your availability and graduation date clearly in your resume.
Candidates can apply to a maximum of two positions and will be considered for jobs in the order you apply. The application limit is applicable to our Company and its affiliates' jobs globally. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis - we encourage you to apply early.
Responsibilities
Minimum Qualifications:
Job Information
【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Annually)
The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $128000 - $316800 annually.
Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units.
Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others. Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure).
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:
1. Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;
2. Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and
3. Exercising sound judgment.
About TikTok
TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. At TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. TikTok's global headquarters are in Los Angeles and Singapore, and we also have offices in New York City, London, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo.
Why Join Us
Inspiring creativity is at the core of TikTok's mission. Our innovative product is 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 bring joy - a mission we work towards every day.
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. Every challenge is an opportunity to learn and innovate as one team. We're resilient and embrace challenges as they come. 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
TikTok 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 TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. 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.
TikTok Accommodation
TikTok 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
LLM Post-training Engineer Graduate (Research & Product) - 2027 Start
Location
:
San Jose
Employment Type
:
Regular
Job Code
:
A212612
Responsibilities
About the team
The Multimedia AI team at TikTok focuses on building, researching, and applying Large Language Models (LLMs) to power our global products. We believe the most impactful problems in AI arise at the intersection of research and real-world deployment—and post-training is where that intersection is sharpest.
We are looking for talented individuals to join our team. As a graduate, you will get opportunities to pursue bold ideas, tackle complex challenges, and unlock limitless growth.
Successful candidates must be able to commit to an onboarding date by the end of the year. Please state your availability and graduation date clearly in your resume.
Candidates can apply to a maximum of two positions and will be considered for jobs in the order you apply. The application limit is applicable to our Company and its affiliates' jobs globally. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis - we encourage you to apply early.
Responsibilities
- Support the development and optimization of post-training strategies, including instruction tuning, preference tuning (SFT/DPO/PPO), and model alignment.
- Assist in building robust evaluation pipelines to measure model performance, helpfulness, and safety across diverse multimedia product use cases.
- Participate in the research and implementation of cutting-edge methodologies in reward modeling and human preference learning.
- Collaborate with engineering teams to bridge the gap between experimental research and production-ready AI applications (e.g., video understanding, translation, and content classification).
- Analyze and process large-scale datasets to identify patterns that improve model behavior and alignment quality.
Minimum Qualifications:
- Individuals who are completing or have recently completed a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning or a related discipline.
- Strong programming skills in Python and experience with deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or JAX.
- Foundational understanding of Transformer architectures and LLM training principles.
- Demonstrated ability to learn quickly in a fast-paced environment and a strong passion for AI "landing" and product application.
- Previous experience or research projects involving LLM fine-tuning, RLHF, or synthetic data generation.
- Familiarity with distributed training tools (e.g., DeepSpeed, Megatron-LM).
- Experience or interest in multimodal AI (integrating text with video or audio).
- Proven track record of building and deploying AI projects, either through previous internships, open-source contributions, or academic research.
Job Information
【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Annually)
The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $128000 - $316800 annually.
Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units.
Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others. Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure).
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:
1. Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;
2. Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and
3. Exercising sound judgment.
About TikTok
TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. At TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. TikTok's global headquarters are in Los Angeles and Singapore, and we also have offices in New York City, London, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo.
Why Join Us
Inspiring creativity is at the core of TikTok's mission. Our innovative product is 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 bring joy - a mission we work towards every day.
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. Every challenge is an opportunity to learn and innovate as one team. We're resilient and embrace challenges as they come. 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
TikTok 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 TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. 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.
TikTok Accommodation
TikTok 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
TikTok
LLM Post-training Engineer Graduate (Research & Product) - 2027 Start
San Jose, California
Added 1d ago10,000+ employees
Job functions:
$128k - $317k/yr
Bachelor's degree
Job Description
Technology
LLM Post-training Engineer Graduate (Research & Product) - 2027 Start
Location
:
San Jose
Employment Type
:
Regular
Job Code
:
A212612
Responsibilities
About the team
The Multimedia AI team at TikTok focuses on building, researching, and applying Large Language Models (LLMs) to power our global products. We believe the most impactful problems in AI arise at the intersection of research and real-world deployment—and post-training is where that intersection is sharpest.
We are looking for talented individuals to join our team. As a graduate, you will get opportunities to pursue bold ideas, tackle complex challenges, and unlock limitless growth.
Successful candidates must be able to commit to an onboarding date by the end of the year. Please state your availability and graduation date clearly in your resume.
Candidates can apply to a maximum of two positions and will be considered for jobs in the order you apply. The application limit is applicable to our Company and its affiliates' jobs globally. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis - we encourage you to apply early.
Responsibilities
Minimum Qualifications:
Job Information
【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Annually)
The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $128000 - $316800 annually.
Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units.
Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others. Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure).
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:
1. Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;
2. Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and
3. Exercising sound judgment.
About TikTok
TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. At TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. TikTok's global headquarters are in Los Angeles and Singapore, and we also have offices in New York City, London, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo.
Why Join Us
Inspiring creativity is at the core of TikTok's mission. Our innovative product is 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 bring joy - a mission we work towards every day.
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. Every challenge is an opportunity to learn and innovate as one team. We're resilient and embrace challenges as they come. 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
TikTok 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 TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. 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.
TikTok Accommodation
TikTok 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
LLM Post-training Engineer Graduate (Research & Product) - 2027 Start
Location
:
San Jose
Employment Type
:
Regular
Job Code
:
A212612
Responsibilities
About the team
The Multimedia AI team at TikTok focuses on building, researching, and applying Large Language Models (LLMs) to power our global products. We believe the most impactful problems in AI arise at the intersection of research and real-world deployment—and post-training is where that intersection is sharpest.
We are looking for talented individuals to join our team. As a graduate, you will get opportunities to pursue bold ideas, tackle complex challenges, and unlock limitless growth.
Successful candidates must be able to commit to an onboarding date by the end of the year. Please state your availability and graduation date clearly in your resume.
Candidates can apply to a maximum of two positions and will be considered for jobs in the order you apply. The application limit is applicable to our Company and its affiliates' jobs globally. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis - we encourage you to apply early.
Responsibilities
- Support the development and optimization of post-training strategies, including instruction tuning, preference tuning (SFT/DPO/PPO), and model alignment.
- Assist in building robust evaluation pipelines to measure model performance, helpfulness, and safety across diverse multimedia product use cases.
- Participate in the research and implementation of cutting-edge methodologies in reward modeling and human preference learning.
- Collaborate with engineering teams to bridge the gap between experimental research and production-ready AI applications (e.g., video understanding, translation, and content classification).
- Analyze and process large-scale datasets to identify patterns that improve model behavior and alignment quality.
Minimum Qualifications:
- Individuals who are completing or have recently completed a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning or a related discipline.
- Strong programming skills in Python and experience with deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or JAX.
- Foundational understanding of Transformer architectures and LLM training principles.
- Demonstrated ability to learn quickly in a fast-paced environment and a strong passion for AI "landing" and product application.
- Previous experience or research projects involving LLM fine-tuning, RLHF, or synthetic data generation.
- Familiarity with distributed training tools (e.g., DeepSpeed, Megatron-LM).
- Experience or interest in multimodal AI (integrating text with video or audio).
- Proven track record of building and deploying AI projects, either through previous internships, open-source contributions, or academic research.
Job Information
【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Annually)
The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $128000 - $316800 annually.
Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units.
Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others. Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure).
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:
1. Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;
2. Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and
3. Exercising sound judgment.
About TikTok
TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. At TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. TikTok's global headquarters are in Los Angeles and Singapore, and we also have offices in New York City, London, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo.
Why Join Us
Inspiring creativity is at the core of TikTok's mission. Our innovative product is 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 bring joy - a mission we work towards every day.
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. Every challenge is an opportunity to learn and innovate as one team. We're resilient and embrace challenges as they come. 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
TikTok 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 TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. 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.
TikTok Accommodation
TikTok 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
See All 36 Llm Engineer Jobs in California
Find roles in California that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Llm Engineer JobsLlm Engineer Jobs by City in California
Where California roles are concentrated, by current openings.
San Jose
10 jobsSan Francisco
10 jobsCupertino
4 jobsSanta Clara
4 jobsMountain View
4 jobsSan Diego
1 jobSunnyvale
1 jobCosta Mesa
1 jobLlm Engineer Job Market in California
A snapshot from current California openings, updated as new roles post.
Who's Hiring
Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software
- Electronics & Hardware
- Automotive
- Social Media
- Telecommunications
What California Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in llm engineer jobs across California.
- Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, AI, or a closely related technical field
- Hands-on experience building or fine-tuning large language models using PyTorch or JAX
- Proficiency in Python and familiarity with transformer architectures such as GPT or LLaMA
- Experience deploying LLM applications via APIs, vector databases, or RAG pipelines
- Ability to evaluate model performance and implement safety, alignment, or RLHF techniques
- Familiarity with cloud infrastructure on AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure for model serving
Llm Engineer Jobs in California: Frequently Asked Questions
How do you become a llm engineer in California?
Most llm engineers in California enter through a computer science, data science, or electrical engineering degree, though a growing number transition from software engineering or ML research roles. No state license is required. California employers, especially in the Bay Area, weight demonstrated project experience heavily, so a portfolio showing fine-tuning experiments, open-source contributions, or published benchmarks often matters as much as formal credentials when applying.
Which companies hire llm engineers in California?
Employers hiring llm engineers in California right now include TikTok, Apple, and Plaud, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of August 2026. California's concentration of AI-native startups and large tech headquarters means openings range from early-stage model research roles to production-scale deployment positions at established platforms.
Which California cities have the most llm engineer jobs?
San Jose, San Francisco, and Cupertino have the most llm engineer openings in California. San Francisco and San Jose dominate because of the Bay Area's density of AI labs, foundation model companies, and major tech headquarters, while Los Angeles has expanded rapidly as entertainment and enterprise software firms there invest in generative AI teams.
Are there remote llm engineer jobs in California?
Yes, and more than most fields. About 37% of llm engineer openings tied to California are remote or hybrid as of August 2026, reflecting the desk-based and collaborative-tooling nature of the work. Roles focused on prompt engineering, evaluation pipelines, and API integration tend to be the most remote-friendly, while positions that require access to proprietary GPU clusters or on-site research teams are more likely to require in-person presence.
How can I get hired as a llm engineer in California with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry path is through an ML engineering or software engineering role at a California company that is actively building AI products, then moving into LLM-specific work once inside. Large California employers like Google and Meta run university new-grad programs that place candidates directly onto model and AI teams. Building a visible portfolio on GitHub, contributing to open-source projects like Hugging Face, and completing a recognized ML specialization credential gives candidates without industry experience a concrete edge in California screening processes.
Where can I find and apply to llm engineer jobs in California?
You can find and apply to llm engineer jobs in California on Migrate Mate, which lists current California openings. Search the available roles, find the ones that fit your background and preferences, and apply directly to each position from the listing.
See All 36 Llm Engineer Jobs in California
Find roles in California that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Llm Engineer Jobs