Engineering Manager, Employee Experience - USDS

TikTok USDS Joint Venture; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 209,000 - 616,000; Full time

Job summary

TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC is seeking an experienced security & infrastructure leader to drive automation, IaC, and scalable security operations in a fast‑scale environment.

You will mentor teams, define architecture roadmaps, and partner across product and security to align security capabilities with business growth. On-site in Los Angeles with a strong emphasis on governance and operational excellence.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in network, endpoint, or infrastructure security; 3+ years in management.
• Proven leadership in transforming IT ops into automation-first teams.
• Deep expertise in Terraform, Ansible, CI/CD and core security areas.
• API-first mindset with REST/GraphQL integrations and automation/AI tooling.
• Strong project management and cross-functional communication skills.
• Solid understanding of InfoSec standards and governance frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Automate diagnostics and monitoring with telemetry-driven workflows.
• Migrate infrastructure to code using Terraform and Ansible across platforms.
• Implement automated testing for deployments, OS upgrades, and security changes.
• Lead engineering culture toward automation-first operations and mentoring.
• Define architecture and platform consolidation plans aligned with business growth.
• Evaluate and integrate emerging AI tools into daily workflows.
• Automate security governance, audits, and policy enforcement across domains.
• Oversee end-to-end security project lifecycles across teams and vendors.

Skills

Security leadership

Terraform/Ansible

CI/CD

API-first

Governance & Compliance

Cross-functional leadership

Security operations

Education

Bachelor's degree preferred

Tools

Palo Alto

Workspace ONE

CrowdStrike

Meraki

Akamai WAF

Job description

Responsibilities

About the Team

The Security and Information Technology team is missioned to run and operate security infrastructures, platforms and technologies, as well as to support cross-functional teams to protect our users, products and infrastructures. In this team you'll have a unique opportunity to have first‑hand exposure to the strategy of the company in key security initiatives, especially in deploying and maintaining scalable and secure‑by‑design systems and solutions. Our challenges are not your regular day‑to‑day technical problems; you'll be part of a team that's developing new solutions to new challenges of a kind not previously addressed by big tech. It's working fast, at scale, and we're making a difference.

The Employee Experience teams sit within Security and Information Technology and jointly own the foundation of how our employees connect to and work on our corporate environment, balancing a strong end‑user experience with the security controls that protect the company.

The Network team designs, operates, and secures our global corporate network, including Palo Alto Prisma and Panorama, Cisco Meraki, Verizon MPLS, and a range of related cloud networking components. The team has a dual remit: delivering a high‑quality user experience on our office Wi‑Fi, and owning the network security posture that sits behind it.

The Endpoint team has a similar dual remit across our fleet of corporate devices. They own MDM, laptop performance monitoring, and OS testing and rollout, while also ensuring that our security agents — including CrowdStrike, our custom HIDS, DTEX, Tenable, etc. — are deployed and healthy on every host in the environment.

Responsibilities

• Automation & Infrastructure Modernization:
  1. Automate diagnostics & monitoring: Design telemetry‑driven workflows for root‑cause analysis and proactive alerting to reduce outages and manual triage.
• Drive Infrastructure as Code (IaC) & API‑first operations: Migrate infrastructure to code (Terraform, Ansible) via CI/CD pipelines, replacing GUI administration with API integrations across all platforms (Palo Alto, Workspace ONE, CrowdStrike, etc.).
• Streamline release & change management: Implement automated testing frameworks for infrastructure deployments, OS upgrades, and security rule changes.
• Engineering Leadership & Strategy:
  4. Transform the engineering culture: Evolve the team toward an automation‑first model, mentoring staff on scalable architectures, code reviews, and SLO‑driven operations.
• Own the technology roadmap: Define architecture and platform consolidation plans, partnering cross‑functionally to align security capabilities with business growth.
• Foster AI & innovation: Rapidly evaluate and integrate emerging AI tools and modern automation platforms into daily operational workflows.
• Security Operations & Governance:
  7. Drive security governance: Automate compliance audits, policy enforcement, and regulatory responses for network and endpoint domains.
• 8. Manage complex security operations: Oversee the end‑to‑end lifecycle of cross‑departmental projects, incident response, and vulnerability management across multiple teams and vendors.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• - 5+ years in network, endpoint, or infrastructure security (Bachelor's degree preferred), including 3+ years in management leading teams of software and infrastructure engineers.
• - Proven leadership in team transformation, with experience reshaping traditional IT ops teams into high‑performing, automation‑first engineering organizations.
• - Deep technical expertise in Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible), CI/CD, and at least two core areas: enterprise firewalls (Palo Alto preferred), UEM/MDM, cloud networking, or endpoint security.
• - API‑first mindset & automation experience: Practical experience integrating vendor platforms (REST, GraphQL) and applying modern automation or AI tools to solve operational challenges.
• - Strong project management & communication: Ability to drive cross‑functional initiatives, manage complex deployments, and deliver executive‑level updates.
• - Thorough understanding of InfoSec technologies, compliance standards, and governance frameworks.

Preferred Qualifications

• - Enterprise‑scale experience with Palo Alto (Panorama/Prisma), Workspace ONE, CrowdStrike, Meraki, Infoblox, or Akamai WAF.
• - Experience building AI‑assisted operational workflows (e.g., using LangChain, LLM orchestration, or similar frameworks).
• - Strong background operating in a GitOps model and implementing modern observability platforms (Prometheus, Datadog, Splunk).
• - Experience automating OS upgrade validations against security agent compatibility via CI/CD pipelines.
• - Relevant industry certifications (CISSP, PCNSE, AWS/Azure/OCI networking) and/or contributions to open‑source security tools.

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 $208800 - $616000 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 judgment.