OPT Llm Engineer Jobs
LLM Engineer roles are among the most actively sponsored positions for F-1 OPT students right now, with demand from AI labs, enterprise software companies, and well-funded startups. Your OPT window, including the 24-month STEM extension, gives you up to three years to build experience and secure H-1B visa sponsorship.
Find OPT Llm Engineer JobsOverview
Showing 5 of 10+ Llm Engineer jobs
See all Llm Engineer Jobs
Sign up for free to unlock all listings, filter by visa type, and get alerts for new Llm Engineer roles.
Get Access To All JobsResponsibilities
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.
Qualifications
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.
Preferred Qualifications:
- 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.
By submitting an application for this role, you accept and agree to our global applicant privacy policy, which may be accessed here: https://careers.tiktok.com/legal/privacy
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:
- 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;
- 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
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.
Qualifications
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.
Preferred Qualifications:
- 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.
By submitting an application for this role, you accept and agree to our global applicant privacy policy, which may be accessed here: https://careers.tiktok.com/legal/privacy
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:
- 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;
- 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 OPT Llm Engineer Jobs
Sign up for free to unlock all listings, filter by visa type, and get alerts for new OPT Llm Engineer Jobs.
Get Access To All JobsTips for Finding OPT Sponsorship as a Llm Engineer
Align your degree field with your job duties
STEM OPT eligibility depends on your role being directly related to your degree. If you studied computer science or data science, document explicitly how your LLM engineering work applies those fields to satisfy DSO and employer verification requirements.
Emphasize production experience, not just research
Employers sponsoring OPT workers want engineers who ship models to production. Highlight experience fine-tuning, deploying, or evaluating large language models in real systems. Research experience alone raises sponsorship hesitancy at many companies.
Raise H-1B sponsorship before accepting an offer
Ask directly whether the company sponsors H-1B visas during the offer negotiation stage, not after signing. Discovering a sponsorship policy gap after your OPT clock is running wastes months you cannot recover.
Get your training plan documentation right from day one
For STEM OPT, your employer must sign a training plan detailing how the role develops your skills. Keep a copy, review it with your DSO, and ensure your actual job duties match what is described to avoid compliance issues.
Build a portfolio that speaks to LLM-specific skills
Open-source contributions, fine-tuned model demos, or retrieval-augmented generation projects give hiring managers concrete proof of your capabilities. A strong portfolio shortens hiring timelines and signals you are worth the sponsorship investment.
Llm Engineer OPT: Frequently Asked Questions
Do LLM Engineer roles qualify for the 24-month STEM OPT extension?
Yes, in most cases. If your degree is in computer science, electrical engineering, data science, or a related STEM field listed on the STEM designated degree program list, and your LLM Engineer role is directly related to that field, you qualify for the 24-month extension. Confirm eligibility with your DSO before your initial OPT period ends.
How do I find LLM Engineer jobs that are open to OPT students?
Migrate Mate is the best place to start. It filters job listings specifically for F-1 OPT and visa-sponsored roles, so you are not wasting time applying to companies that will not hire international students. Search for LLM Engineer, ML Engineer, or AI Engineer roles and filter by OPT sponsorship to surface the most relevant opportunities.
What happens to my OPT authorization if my LLM Engineer job ends unexpectedly?
You have a 60-day unemployment buffer during your OPT period. If you lose your job, you must report the change to your DSO immediately and begin searching for a new qualifying position. Exceeding 90 total days of unemployment across your entire OPT period, including STEM extension, can result in a loss of status.
Does my LLM Engineer role need to be full-time for OPT to remain valid?
OPT permits both full-time and part-time employment, but most students on post-completion OPT work full-time to maximize their unemployment buffer and demonstrate active engagement in their field. STEM OPT rules require that the role be paid and that the employer be enrolled in E-Verify, regardless of whether the position is full-time or part-time.
Can I work as a contract or freelance LLM Engineer on OPT?
Self-employment and independent contracting are technically permitted on OPT, but the rules are strict. You must be actively engaged in work related to your degree, able to document your projects, and cannot simply list yourself as a contractor without real, verifiable work. Most immigration attorneys recommend salaried employment with an E-Verify employer for STEM OPT to reduce compliance risk.