Software Development Engineer Intern (Metadata Storage) - 2026 Start (PhD)

Responsibilities

About the Team The Foundational Technology team is at the core of ByteDance’s global infrastructure, delivering high-availability, performant software components and foundational services. We focus on low-level storage and network domains, with ongoing projects including the development of in-house metadata storage engines for ByteDance’s ultrascale Kubernetes clusters. As an international team, we thrive on innovation and collaboration, working with both technical infrastructure teams (compute, storage, databases) and upper-layer business units (advertising, payments, AI) to solve critical system challenges. We are looking for talented individuals to join us for an internship in 2026. PhD Internships at ByteDance aim to provide students with the opportunity to actively contribute to our products and research, and to the organization's future plans and emerging technologies. PhD internships at ByteDance provide students with the opportunity to actively contribute to our products and research, and to the organization's future plans and emerging technologies. Our dynamic internship experience blends hands-on learning, enriching community-building and development events, and collaboration with industry experts. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis - we encourage you to apply early. Please state your availability clearly in your resume (Start date, End date). Responsibilities As an intern on our team, you will: - Assist in designing and developing ultra-performance metadata services, including distributed coordination, locking, key-value storage, and service discovery features. - Support the creation of automated and disaster-tolerance deployment solutions for virtualized and bare-metal environments. - Analyze service performance metrics, generate insights, and propose data-driven improvements to enhance reliability and efficiency. - Participate in technical discussions and documentation efforts, ensuring alignment with team standards and best practices.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications - Currently pursuing a PhD degree in Computer Science or related fields in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field. - Strong programming skills in C++ or Go in Linux environments, with experience in writing clean, maintainable and testable code. - Have a solid understanding of CS Fundamentals: basic data structures (lists, queues, stacks, trees, graphs, hash tables) and algorithms (binary search, quick sort, divide and conquer, backtracking), operating system (processes, threads, mutexes, semaphores, deadlock, paging, segmentation, file system), network (OSI models, TCP/UDP, IP addressing, HTTP, DNS). - Have a basic understanding of distributed systems (e.g. CAP theorem), databases (e.g. relational vs nosql, transaction, isolation levels), and storage systems (e.g. replication, erasure encoding). Preferred Qualifications: - Familiarity with advanced data structures (LSM trees, B+ trees) and algorithms (Paxos, Raft). *Online courses and books such as MIT 6.824 Distributed Systems and Designing Data-Intensive Applications (DDIA) are good study resources for those topics. - Hands-on or research experience with distributed systems such as HDFS, Colossus, Spanner, Chubby, ZooKeeper, etcd. - Familiarity with linux system programming (epoll, io uring) and high performance networking (RDMA, DPDK) By submitting an application for this role, you accept and agree to our global applicant privacy policy, which may be accessed here: https://jobs.bytedance.com/en/legal/privacy

Job Information

【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Hourly) - Campus Intern

The hourly rate range for this position in the selected city is $60- $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 Us

Founded in 2012, ByteDance's mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. With a suite of more than a dozen products, including TikTok, Lemon8, CapCut and Pico as well as platforms specific to the China market, including Toutiao, Douyin, and Xigua, ByteDance has made it easier and more fun for people to connect with, consume, and create content.

Why Join ByteDance

Inspiring creativity is at the core of ByteDance's mission. Our innovative products are 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 enrich life - a mission we work towards every day.

As ByteDancers, 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. 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

ByteDance 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 ByteDance, our mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. 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.

Reasonable Accommodation

ByteDance 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