TikTok Data Scientist Interview Guide

Tiktok product data scientist interview guide

TikTok Data Scientist Introduction

TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video.

TikTok’s US offices have many openings for data scientists, most notably in Los Angeles, Mountain View, and New York.

TikTok’s data scientists’ daily activities may include:

Work with the product team to evaluate the potential impact of new product features.
Define product metrics and quantitative measurement structure based on product stages and business purposes.
Design and implement reporting dashboards and the associated data pipeline to deliver insights and improve the workflows of internal teams.
Partner closely with key stakeholders to optimize overall product adoption and performance-driven growth. Provide suggestions for improvements to align with the business goal.
Measure and visualize the effectiveness of product updates, conduct research, and analysis on various business processes to identify business problems, and further provide optimization suggestions to improve operating efficiency.

This guide will walk you through what the TikTok Data Scientist interview process looks like, and sample interview questions. As well as a TikTok Data Scientist case study.

The interview process mainly includes evaluating a candidate’s following skills: SQL , Machine Learning , Behavioral Questions | Leadership , A/B Testing , Product Sense , Data Challenge , etc.

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About TikTok

TikTok, known in China as Douyin, is a video-focused social networking service owned by the Chinese company ByteDance Ltd.

It hosts a variety of short-form user videos from genres like pranks, stunts, tricks, jokes, dance, and entertainment with durations from 15 seconds to ten minutes.

TikTok is an international version of Douyin, which was originally released in the Chinese market in September 2016.

TikTok was launched in 2017 for iOS and Android in most markets outside of mainland China; however, it became available worldwide only after merging with another Chinese social media service, Musical.ly, on 2 August 2018.

TikTok and Douyin have almost the same user interface but no access to each other’s content. Their servers are each based in the market where the respective app is available.

The two products are similar, but their features are not identical. Douyin includes an in-video search feature that can search people’s faces for more videos of them and other features such as buying, booking hotels, and making geo-tagged reviews.

Since their launch in 2016, TikTok and Douyin have rapidly gained popularity in virtually all parts.

As of October 2020, TikTok surpassed over 2 billion mobile downloads worldwide.

Morning Consult ranked TikTok as the third fastest-growing brand of 2020, after only Zoom and Peacock.[19] Cloudflare ranked TikTok as the most popular website of 2021, usurping Google.

Tiktok Data Scientist Salary Guide

Every situation is different, e.g., the offer also depends on your interview performance, job location and the urgency of filling that role. Therefore, this data is for your reference only and may not apply to everyone.

TikTok Data Scientist Required Skills

SQL
Machine Learning
Behavioral Questions | Leadership
A/B Testing
Product Sense
Data Challenge

TikTok Data Scientist Interview Sample Questions

Product sense:

Avg spending per advertiser dropped from 30% last month. How would you investigate? What data will you use?
How to determine the frequency of emails we send to our users per week?

SQL (click for more TikTok SQL interview questions on sqlpad):

Given an advertiser sign up table and our ads spending by different marketing channels (Facebook, Pinterest, google search), write a query to find the channel with the highest ROI: the number of signed up advertisers from that channel/marketing budget in that channel

Statistics/AB Testing

Give me an example where the p-value is smaller than 0.05 but you still decided to not launch the new feature
Type I error vs Type II error, what is the p-value, and what is a confidence interval?

Behavioral questions

Why TikTok?
Why do you want to leave your current job?
What is your favorite app? How do you like it compare to TikTok?

TikTok Data Scientist Interview Case Study

Here is a TikTok data scientist interview case study.

TikTok Data Scientist interview summary

How it gets started: recruiter reached out on LinkedIn

Job Level: Mid

Year of Experience: 3 years

Degree: M.S. in Biostatistics

Offer: Yes

T.C.: ~250K USD

Location: Mountain View, CA

Interview process: 3 weeks

Team: Ads

Preparation: 3 weeks

Has a job: yes

Difficulty: Medium

TikTok Data Scientist interview round 1: written take-home product analytics assignment

TikTok is planning to launch a new Q&A feature. Answer each of the following questions in less than 150 words.

As a data scientist, how would you evaluate this feature? Name one primary metric and additional metrics.
Propose experimentation and rollout plan, keep in mind the speed of innovation, statistical rigor, and potential risk mitigation in case of unforeseen issues.
(Discussion) Pros and cons of this feature, how would you present your results to the product team?

TikTok Data Scientist interview round 2: Technical Screening

3 SQL questions, one of them has to be solved with window functions, all sqlpad medium level.

More TikTok SQL questions on sqlpad

TikTok Data Scientist interview virtual onsite(4 rounds):

Behavioral/ Culture fit

Why TikTok?
Why are you looking for a new opportunity?
What is your ideal team?

Product sense

What is your favorite app?
How do you like its recommendation engine vs. TikTok’s recommendation engine?