App Compliance Management Lead - Compliance Governance and Risk Management

TikTok USDS Joint Venture; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 442,000; Full time

Job summary

TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC is seeking an App Compliance Management Lead to oversee its four core processes: product onboarding, feature onboarding, compliance incident support, and business inquiries. The role focuses on operational excellence, timely escalations, and clear communication across business, product, legal, and security teams.

The ideal candidate has 10+ years in compliance/operations, proven leadership of mid-sized teams, and experience translating complex regulations into

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in compliance, security/privacy risk, regulatory operations, or trust and safety operations within fast-moving tech environments.
• Experience leading compliance operations or assurance teams, including work distribution and talent development for a mid-sized team.
• Regulatory compliance experience with translating complex requirements into practical guidance for products and operations.
• Proven ability to scale end-to-end intake and assessment processes (oncall, ticket review, launch readiness, incident review).
• Ability to manage complex cross-departmental programs across multiple products and allocate resources to land outcomes.
• Strong operations discipline with metrics-driven approach and preference for tech-enabled solutions.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills with senior stakeholders and cross-functional teams.

Responsibilities

• Own day-to-day operations across the team’s four core processes—product onboarding, feature onboarding, compliance incident support, and business inquiries & escalations—overseeing pod leads and contributors.
• Enhance and streamline the end-to-end intake and routing lifecycle for requests, including on-call management and complex assessments, with clear owners and SLAs.
• Lead product onboarding, map governance requirements to controls, review compliant solutions, and mitigate risk prior to launch.
• Direct compliance support for security and privacy incidents, scoping assessments and reviewing remediation solutions to meet regulatory commitments.
• Serve as primary contact and escalation owner for cross-functional stakeholders, driving escalations and ensuring compliant launches.
• Translate objectives into operating plans and OKRs, manage workload and KPIs, monitor SLAs and throughput, and remove bottlenecks with data-driven reviews.
• Scale the operating model by developing SOPs, playbooks, and tooling to increase coverage and reduce cycle time.

Skills

Compliance operations

Regulatory risk management

Leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Program management

Operational excellence

Communication

On-call management

Tools

Archer

ServiceNow

Job description

Responsibilities

About the Team

TikTok U.S. is seeking an App Compliance Management Lead to be part of the US Security & Privacy Compliance Governance and Risk Management team. This role will have a significant impact on mitigating regulatory compliance risk and maturing the end-to-end compliance operations that allow apps and features to launch and operate in the United States.

About the Role

The primary focus of this role will be to own and run the JV App Compliance Management capability, overseeing its four core processes: 1) product onboarding, 2) feature onboarding, 3) compliance incident support, and 4) business inquiries & escalations. The Lead is first and foremost an operations-focused leader who keeps the team aligned to priorities, ensures every business request enters and moves through the right sub-process and stays on-track according to SLAs, personally supports the most complex escalations, and serves as the primary point of contact and a clear, credible communicator for cross-functional business, product, legal, and Security & Privacy teams. The Lead must have a business enablement mindset, being a subject matter expert of TikTok U.S.' regulatory and industry standard governance requirements, and applying it practically to the team's operations.

Responsibilities

• Own day-to-day operations across the team's four core processes — product onboarding, feature onboarding, compliance incident support, and business inquiries & escalations — overseeing the pod leads and individual contributors who run them and holding the capability accountable for service quality, timeliness, and consistent decisioning
• Enhancing and streamlining the end-to-end intake and routing lifecycle for business compliance requests and escalations, including oncall management and complex assessments, and application and feature launch reviews — ensuring every request is triaged into the correct sub-process, assigned a clear owner, tracked against SLAs, and closed with a logged, reusable compliance decision
• Lead application product and feature onboarding: determine how the JV's regulatory and industry standard governance requirements apply to a product, map the applicable controls, review proposed compliant solutions from cross-functional teams for sufficiency, and partner with the cross-functional partners to appropriately mitigate risk prior to launch
• Direct compliance support for security and privacy incidents — scoping and performing compliance assessments and reviewing remediation solutions, so incidents are resolved in line with regulatory commitments
• Serve as the primary point of contact and escalation owner for cross-functional stakeholders: communicate clearly with business, product, PMO, Legal, Global TikTok parterns, and Security & Privacy cross-functional teams, drive escalations through the appropriate channels, and unblock launches without sacrificing compliance
• Keep the capability on track against priorities: translate team and company objectives into operating plans and OKRs, manage workload and resourcing across the sub-processes, define and monitor operating metrics (KPIs/KRIs, SLAs, throughput, aging), and remove bottlenecks through data-driven reviews
• Mature and scale the operating model: challenge the status quo of manual reviews, develop repeatable SOPs, playbooks, and checklists, and drive technology-enabled workflows and tooling that increase assessment coverage, reduce cycle time, and lower manual effort
• Partner with the business and Security & Privacy colleagues to embed compliance by design early in product planning, align launch reviews to the control library and regulatory reporting, and build a strong culture of compliance across the business; develop team talent, coach reviewers, and grow the capability's leadership pipeline

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• 10+ years of applicable experience in compliance, security/privacy risk, regulatory operations, or trust and safety operations within consumer high-tech, media and entertainment, e-commerce, advertising/payments, or similar fast-moving environments
• Demonstrated experience leading compliance operations, or assurance teams, including work distribution, talent development, recruiting, and performance management for a mid-sized team, dealing with a high-volume of requests
• Regulatory compliance experience, with a proven ability to translate complex regulatory requirements into practical product and operational guidance
• Proven track record operating and scaling end-to-end intake and assessment processes (e.g., oncall, ticket review, launch readiness/gating, incident review) — triaging requests into the right sub-process, managing against SLAs, and maintaining authoritative decision records
• Ability to independently manage complex, cross-departmental compliance programs across multiple products; anticipate risks, plan the full lifecycle of complex initiatives, coordinate across organizations, and allocate resources to land outcomes; proactively pre-empt complex regulatory requirements and build repeatable, scalable processes and tooling across company-level products
• Strong operations discipline: exceptional prioritization, program/project management, metrics-driven operations (KPIs/KRIs), and continuous improvement, with a bias for technology-driven solutions over manual workarounds
• Excellent organizational direction, time management, problem-solving, leadership, motivation, negotiation, and interpersonal skills. Outstanding written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain technical and regulatory concepts to a broad range of technical and non-technical staff and to serve as a credible point of contact to senior cross-functional stakeholders and ability to collaborate with product, operations, and engineering teams, provide compliant and pragmatic solutions, and communicate appropriately to a wide range of audiences with a "business first" mindset. Thoughtful and responsible professional — self-motivated and can proactively seek input

Preferred Qualifications:

• High-tech experience; Experience in a U.S. national security regulated data environment
• Experience with external compliance reporting to regulators (i.e., privacy, CFIUS, etc.)
• One of the following certifications, or equivalent certifications: CISA, CDPSE, CISSP, CISM, CRISC, etc.
• Experience with risk and controls frameworks including (ISO 27001, NIST CSF, NIST RMF, NIST 800-53, FAIR, COBIT, ISO 31000 etc.)
• Familiarity with modern GRC/IRM and workflow tooling (i.e., Archer, ServiceNow) to run technology-enabled compliance operations

About USDS

TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC is dedicated to the safety and security of millions of Americans who create, discover, and connect with what they love on the apps we operate. The Joint Venture has been established in compliance with the Executive Order signed by President Trump on September 25, 2025. Our foundation is a comprehensive data privacy and cybersecurity program we operate under defined safeguards to protect national security and secure U.S. user data, apps and the algorithm. We safeguard the U.S. content ecosystem, holding decision-making authority for trust and safety policies and moderation. USDS Joint Venture helps ensure Americans can continue to express their creativity, discover new hobbies and interests, and build thriving communities and businesses on a global scale.

On-site presence across teams allows the company to operate with greater speed, alignment, and agility — especially in areas like real-time decision-making, team development, and integrated execution. As such, the company is shifting from a hybrid work model to a fully in-person schedule up to 5 days a week.

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.

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 https://tinyurl.com/USDS-RA

Job Information

【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Annually)

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $199800 - $441600 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;
3. Exercising sound judgement.