AI Software Engineer - Code Intelligence & Quality Validation

TikTok Inc.; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 162,000 - 317,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) with company match

Paid parental leave

Short-term and long-term disability

Job summary

TikTok Inc. is seeking a skilled software engineer to advance the Agentic Ops US team.

You will design and optimize Code Graph capabilities, implement static and dynamic validation, and collaborate across client, backend, and infrastructure teams to improve reliability and RD efficiency. Your role focuses on building scalable, data-driven validation systems, analyzing production issues, and applying program analysis, traces, and runtime signals to derive reusable fixes and patterns for

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or above in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, or a related field; 3+ years of professional software development experience.
• Strong programming fundamentals and proficiency in at least one mainstream programming language (Java, Kotlin, Go, Python, C++).
• Strong system design and software architecture skills with ability to decompose complex systems and define module boundaries.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and optimize Code Graph capabilities including static/dynamic relationship extraction and graph data modeling.
• Contribute to architecture and technical design of core systems with a system-level view of boundaries and dependencies.
• Develop static validation capabilities mining and validating logical constraints; improve rule accuracy and coverage.
• Build dynamic validation for production issue detection, reproduction, and root-cause localization; create reusable solutions.
• Analyze complex production quality issues using code, traces, and runtime signals to extract patterns and drive automated validation.

Skills

Java

Kotlin

Go

Python

C++

Education

Bachelor's degree or above in Computer Science / Software Engineering / AI or related field

Tools

OpenTelemetry

eBPF

AST / CFG analysis

Job description

Responsibilities

The Agentic Ops US team focuses on two major areas: Code Graph and Quality Validation. The code graph serves as the data foundation for validation, encompassing static relationships (function calls, experiment/instrumentation dependencies) and dynamic execution paths (reconstructed from traces). Quality validation covers static rule checking (mining soft and logical constraints) and dynamic issue detection, reproduction, and fixing. We aim to improve code reliability and R&D efficiency through systematic, data-driven approaches.

• Design, develop, and optimize Code Graph capabilities, including static relationship extraction, dynamic trace processing, execution path reconstruction, and graph data modeling.
• Contribute to the architecture and technical design of core systems, with a system-level view of module boundaries, dependencies, scalability, and maintainability, and drive technical solutions through implementation.
• Design and develop static validation capabilities based on the code graph, including mining and validating logical and soft constraints, while continuously improving rule accuracy and coverage.
• Build dynamic validation capabilities for production issue detection, reproduction, root cause localization, and assisted fixing, and develop reusable solutions for common problem patterns.
• Conduct in-depth analysis of complex production quality issues by leveraging code, traces, and other runtime signals, identify root causes, extract generalized patterns, and drive automated validation coverage.
• Develop a deep understanding of code organization, module dependencies, build pipelines, and runtime behavior in large-scale client applications, and explore how Code Intelligence can improve the understandability and quality of complex codebases.
• Explore and introduce techniques in code analysis, program slicing, anomaly detection, LLMs / Agents, and related areas, and apply them to real-world engineering problems.
• Collaborate closely with client, backend, and infrastructure teams to drive

Qualifications

Minimum Qualification(s)

• Bachelor's degree or above in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, or a related field, with 3+ years of professional software development experience.
• Strong programming fundamentals and proficiency in at least one mainstream programming language, such as Java / Kotlin / Go / Python / C++, with solid coding practices and engineering skills.
• Strong system design and software architecture skills, with the ability to decompose complex systems, define clear module boundaries, interfaces, and dependencies, and make sound trade-offs across maintainability, scalability, reliability, and performance.
• Hands-on experience with large-scale or complex engineering projects, with the ability to independently analyze problems, design technical solutions, implement core components, and drive solutions to production.
• Strong foundation in data structures and algorithms, with strong problem abstraction and analytical skills and the ability to quickly understand complex codebases and execution flows.
• Strong investigative mindset and curiosity about unfamiliar problems, with the ability to learn deeply from technical documentation, source code, papers, and other resources and translate insights into practical engineering solutions.
• Strong learning agility, with the ability to quickly ramp up on new technical domains, codebases, and complex systems.

Preferred Qualification(s)

• Android development experience is preferred, especially experience with Android Framework, application architecture, modularization, build systems, performance optimization, or large-scale Android applications.
• Experience with static analysis (e.g., AST, CFG, Call Graph, Data Flow / Pointer Analysis), program analysis, or compiler development.
• Experience with dynamic tracing, observability, or production diagnostics, such as eBPF, OpenTelemetry, or distributed tracing.
• Experience with Code Intelligence, Developer Infrastructure, automated testing, quality platforms, or Root Cause Analysis.
• Experience building large-scale distributed systems, graph processing systems, search/indexing infrastructure, or related platforms.
• Experience with LLMs, AI Coding Agents, Agentic Workflows, or AI for Software Engineering.
• Publications in academic conferences or journals related to code analysis, software engineering, or system reliability, or significant contributions to major open-source projects.

Job Information

[For Pay Transparency] Compensation Description (annually)

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $162000 - $316800 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.

• 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.