Senior Software Engineer, Trust & Safety - USDS

Responsibilities
About the team We are looking for a Senior Engineering Lead to join our embedded Trust and Safety team. This position is dedicated to deep technical leadership, guiding the direction and strategy for our proactive risk detection initiatives. You'll join a team with data and full-stack engineers to build high-leverage tools that enhance our Risk and Detection programs, focusing on high-harm, high-risk issues where traditional training data may fall short. You'll provide significant input and guidance on technical direction, architecture, and project selection, playing a pivotal role in identifying and exploring innovative solutions, especially those leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), to evolve our current bespoke detection systems towards more predictive, subject-agnostic models. As a Senior Engineering Lead, you'll be instrumental in elevating engineering excellence by championing best practices and defining operational standards. You'll guide the team in prioritizing and executing initiatives, translating creative ideas into aligned, high-impact solutions that directly support broader business goals. A key part of your role will be fostering cross-functional alignment, engaging proactively with Product, Operations, and other engineering leaders to ensure our work is seamlessly integrated and in lockstep with company-wide objectives. This role performs a critical function that supports our efforts to address objectionable or disturbing content. Content that this role interacts with includes images, video, and text related to every-day life, but it can also include (but is not limited to) bullying; hate speech; child abuse; sexual assault; torture; bestiality; self-harm; suicide; and murder. It is possible that this role will be exposed to harmful content on a daily basis. In order to enhance collaboration and cross-functional partnerships, among other things, at this time, our organization follows a hybrid work schedule that requires employees to work in the office 3 days a week, or as directed by their manager/department. We regularly review our hybrid work model, and the specific requirements may change at any time. Responsibilities - Mentor and guide data and engineering team on technical growth and career development, providing regular feedback. - Align team efforts with business priorities and enforce execution discipline to ensure high impact. - Partner with cross-functional teams to define, prioritize, and deliver high-impact engineering solutions. - Provide technical vision for the team, effectively framing complex problems, defining project scope, and ensuring tight feedback loops with users. - Raise technical quality standards across the team, particularly for React-based frontends and scalable backend patterns (Python, Golang). - Clarify ambiguous challenges, drive accountability for results, and champion impact over mere output. - Ensure team well-being and psychological safety when navigating exposure to sensitive or disturbing content, balancing velocity with care.
Qualifications
Minimum Qualifications - Proven experience leading and influencing engineering teams towards successful project delivery. - A strong background as a senior, front-end, or full-stack engineer with excellent technical judgment and deep architectural understanding. - Demonstrated ability to align technical efforts with strategic priorities and adeptly guide teams through ambiguous problem spaces. - Strong product instincts and user empathy, particularly in environments where dedicated product management may be lean. - Exceptional communication and collaboration skills, capable of influencing both engineers and cross-functional partners. - Experience in high-velocity environments, with a talent for enforcing focus while maintaining team momentum. - Deeply curious about the capabilities of LLMs and AI Preferred Qualifications - Experience working on Trust & Safety, detection, security, or integrity systems - Familiarity with emerging threat models, adversarial behaviors, or large-scale abuse mitigation - Exposure to ML- or LLM-powered internal tools (e.g., RAG pipelines, classifier integrations) - Your ability to work in a high tempo environment, adapt, respond to day-to-day challenges of the role. - Your resilience and commitment to self-care to manage the emotional demands of the role.
Job Information
(For Pay Transparency)Compensation Description (Annually)
The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $ - $ 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:
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 USDS
TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. Our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. U.S. Data Security ("USDS") is a subsidiary of TikTok in the U.S. This new, security-first division was created to bring heightened focus and governance to our data protection policies and content assurance protocols to keep U.S. users safe. Our focus is on providing oversight and protection of the TikTok platform and U.S. user data, so millions of Americans can continue turning to TikTok to learn something new, earn a living, express themselves creatively, or be entertained. The teams within USDS that deliver on this commitment daily span across Trust & Safety, Security & Privacy, Engineering, User & Product Ops, Corporate Functions and more.
Data Security Statement
This role requires the ability to work with and support systems designed to protect sensitive data and information. As such, this role will be subject to strict national security-related screening.
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.
Trust & Safety
TikTok recognises that keeping our platform safe for the TikTok communities is no ordinary job which can be both rewarding and psychologically demanding and emotionally taxing for some. This is why we are sharing the potential hazards, risks and implications in this unique line of work from the start, so our candidates are well informed before joining.
We are committed to the wellbeing of all our employees and promise to provide comprehensive and evidence-based programs, to promote and support physical and mental wellbeing throughout each employee's journey with us. We believe that wellbeing is a relationship and that everyone has a part to play, so we work in collaboration and consultation with our employees and across our functions in order to ensure a truly person-centred, innovative and integrated approach.
USDS Reasonable Accommodation
USDS 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