Hourly Backend Developer Intern Jobs in California

Responsibilities
Our Team is building AI infrastructure and developer platform capabilities used by approximately 500 engineers. The team supports AI-native software development by improving shared tooling, platform workflows, and reusable technical building blocks across the engineering organization. As a project intern, you will have the opportunity to engage in impactful short-term projects that provide you with a glimpse of professional real-world experience. You will gain practical skills through on-the-job learning in a fast-paced work environment and develop a deeper understanding of your career interests. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis - we encourage you to apply early. What You'll Gain - Experience building AI infrastructure and platform capabilities for a real engineering organization of approximately 500 engineers. - Exposure to practical challenges in AI-native developer tooling, including knowledge systems, agent capabilities, and platform usability. - Opportunities to work on cross-functional infrastructure projects spanning backend, frontend, and developer workflow integration. - Mentorship and hands-on experience in applied AI platform engineering within a production engineering environment. Responsibilities - Contribute to AI infrastructure and platform development that supports internal engineering use cases at scale. - Build and improve knowledge base capabilities, including document ingestion, indexing, retrieval, and RAG-style pipelines. - Develop and refine AI Skills, including modular agent capabilities and reusable tool integrations. - Help optimize the experience of the unified AI Coding platform for engineering users. - Support public infrastructure work related to AI-native developer tooling, platform workflows, and internal integration patterns. - Collaborate with engineers across backend, frontend, and platform domains to prototype, test, and iterate on developer-facing AI systems. - Assist with evaluating system quality, reliability, and usability of AI platform components.
Qualifications
Minimum Qualifications: - Currently pursuing Undergraduate/Master in Computer Science or a related technical field. - Solid programming skills and software engineering fundamentals. - Hands-on experience with one or more areas related to AI systems, such as information retrieval, LLM applications, agents, RAG pipelines, or developer tools. - Familiarity with backend and/or frontend development in modern engineering environments. - Ability to work on infrastructure or platform problems with attention to reliability, maintainability, and developer experience. - Strong problem-solving skills and clear written/verbal communication. Preferred Qualifications: - Experience with knowledge base systems, document processing pipelines, search, or retrieval infrastructure. - Experience building internal tools, developer platforms, or productivity tooling. - Familiarity with Java and/or React. - Familiarity with engineering workflows and tools such as GitLab, CI/CD systems, or project management platforms such as Meego. - Experience with evaluation, debugging, or operational improvement of AI-assisted workflows.
Job Information
[For Pay Transparency]Compensation Description (Hourly) - Campus Intern
The hourly rate range for this position in the selected city is $45- $60.
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:
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