OPT Mlops Engineer Jobs
MLOps Engineer jobs on OPT sit at the intersection of machine learning and production infrastructure, making them highly attractive to F-1 students with STEM-designated degrees. Most roles qualify for the 24-month STEM OPT extension. Employers in this space regularly file H-1B visa petitions, giving you a clear path beyond your initial OPT period.
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The monetization technology team works on building and running large-scale, globally distributed, fault-tolerant ads systems. SREs keep the systems up and running with the highest level of availability, ensuring our users have the best experience possible. 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:
- Define and drive Service Level Objectives (SLOs) for online machine learning inference systems, ensuring the reliability, availability, and performance of large-scale production inference services.
- Ensure the reliability and operational excellence of offline machine learning training pipelines, continuously improving training job success rates.
- Drive infrastructure capacity planning and resource management for machine learning workloads, ensuring compute resources meet evolving business demands while continuously improving GPU and CPU utilization through performance optimization.
- Lead the enablement of new machine learning frameworks and GPU platforms, driving large-scale production deployment while maintaining model quality and business performance.
- Design, build, and maintain MLOps platforms and automation tools, including quota management, job diagnostics, monitoring and observability, resource management, and operational tooling.
Qualifications
Minimum Qualifications:
- Individuals who are completing or have recently completed a Bachelor’s/ Master’s degree in Computer Science or a related discipline.
- Expertise in Linux operating systems, networking, storage.
- Experience programming in at least one of the following programming languages: Python, Go, C, C++, or Java.
- Experience in troubleshooting application issues, or production operations.
- Effective communication skills and a sense of ownership and drive.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience in SRE of machine learning systems.
- Experience in SRE of ads/recommendation/search systems.
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 - $256000 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
The monetization technology team works on building and running large-scale, globally distributed, fault-tolerant ads systems. SREs keep the systems up and running with the highest level of availability, ensuring our users have the best experience possible. 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:
- Define and drive Service Level Objectives (SLOs) for online machine learning inference systems, ensuring the reliability, availability, and performance of large-scale production inference services.
- Ensure the reliability and operational excellence of offline machine learning training pipelines, continuously improving training job success rates.
- Drive infrastructure capacity planning and resource management for machine learning workloads, ensuring compute resources meet evolving business demands while continuously improving GPU and CPU utilization through performance optimization.
- Lead the enablement of new machine learning frameworks and GPU platforms, driving large-scale production deployment while maintaining model quality and business performance.
- Design, build, and maintain MLOps platforms and automation tools, including quota management, job diagnostics, monitoring and observability, resource management, and operational tooling.
Qualifications
Minimum Qualifications:
- Individuals who are completing or have recently completed a Bachelor’s/ Master’s degree in Computer Science or a related discipline.
- Expertise in Linux operating systems, networking, storage.
- Experience programming in at least one of the following programming languages: Python, Go, C, C++, or Java.
- Experience in troubleshooting application issues, or production operations.
- Effective communication skills and a sense of ownership and drive.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience in SRE of machine learning systems.
- Experience in SRE of ads/recommendation/search systems.
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 - $256000 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 Mlops Engineer Jobs
Sign up for free to unlock all listings, filter by visa type, and get alerts for new OPT Mlops Engineer Jobs.
Get Access To All JobsTips for Finding OPT Sponsorship as a Mlops Engineer
Target STEM OPT-eligible roles explicitly
MLOps Engineering consistently falls under STEM-designated CIP codes in computer science and engineering. Confirm your degree qualifies before applying, then filter for employers with active E-Verify enrollment, which is required for the 24-month STEM extension.
Emphasize production ML experience over research
Employers sponsoring OPT want engineers who can ship models to production, not just build notebooks. Highlight experience with model serving, monitoring pipelines, and CI/CD for ML workflows. Research background alone raises questions about job-readiness for engineering teams.
Know your OPT authorization timeline before interviewing
Hiring managers often ask when you can start and how long you can work without sponsorship. Know your OPT end date, your STEM extension eligibility window, and your I-20 program end date so you can answer confidently without hesitation.
Prioritize companies with established MLOps infrastructure
Companies already running Kubeflow, MLflow, or Vertex AI pipelines have proven engineering needs for this role. These organizations are far more likely to sponsor because the business case for the hire is already established and headcount is budgeted.
Address sponsorship directly but briefly in applications
Do not hide OPT status or bury it in cover letters. State clearly that you are authorized to work on OPT and eligible for the STEM extension. Ambiguity causes recruiters to pass. Clarity keeps you in the pipeline.
Build a portfolio around real deployment artifacts
GitHub repos showing deployed model pipelines, monitoring dashboards, or containerized inference services carry more weight than academic projects. Sponsors need evidence you can operate at production scale, not just demonstrate theoretical knowledge of MLOps concepts.
Mlops Engineer OPT: Frequently Asked Questions
Do MLOps Engineer roles qualify for the 24-month STEM OPT extension?
Most do. MLOps Engineering typically falls under STEM-designated fields such as computer science, computer engineering, or data science. Your degree's CIP code determines eligibility, not the job title itself. Confirm your program's CIP code with your DSO before accepting a role, and verify the employer is enrolled in E-Verify, which is a separate requirement for the extension.
How competitive is OPT sponsorship for MLOps Engineer positions specifically?
MLOps is a specialized discipline with a genuine talent shortage, which improves your position relative to more saturated roles like general software engineering. Companies running machine learning in production, particularly in fintech, healthtech, and enterprise SaaS, actively recruit for this skill set. Migrate Mate lists MLOps roles from employers who have demonstrated willingness to work with OPT candidates and file H-1B visa petitions.
What happens to my OPT authorization if my MLOps role is reclassified or my employer is acquired?
Your OPT authorization is tied to your employment in a role directly related to your degree field, not to a specific employer. If your role changes significantly or your employer undergoes a material change such as an acquisition, notify your DSO promptly. A material change that affects your employment terms may require updating your I-20 or filing an amended H-1B if you have already transitioned to that status.
Can I work as a contractor or through a staffing agency as an MLOps Engineer on OPT?
Contract and staffing arrangements are permitted on OPT, but they carry more scrutiny than direct employment. The work must still be directly related to your degree and meet the minimum 20-hour-per-week requirement. Self-employment is also allowed under OPT rules, though it requires careful documentation. For any arrangement, keep records of your employer of record and the scope of work performed.
What technical skills make an MLOps candidate more likely to receive sponsorship?
Employers prioritizing sponsorship want candidates with demonstrable production experience, specifically containerization with Docker and Kubernetes, experiment tracking tools like MLflow or Weights and Biases, and cloud ML platforms such as AWS SageMaker, GCP Vertex AI, or Azure ML. Candidates who can also write infrastructure-as-code using Terraform or Pulumi stand out. These skills signal that you can operate independently in a production environment from day one.