Head of Advanced Threat Management

TikTok USDS Joint Venture; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 238,000 - 397,000; Full time

Job summary

TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC seeks a visionary Head of Advanced Threat Management Operations to own end-to-end threat defense across cyber and physical domains in a highly technical, AI-powered security program.

You will lead a decentralized, agile team, drive autonomous detection engineering, real-time telemetry enrichment, and automated incident response for internet-scale products within the JV Secure Environment.

Qualifications

• Must have 10+ years in cybersecurity within tech or high-scale internet environments.
• Engineering or highly technical cyber background with deep knowledge of applications, distributed systems, and cloud architecture.
• Proven track record of commanding major security incidents with minimal disruption to global product availability.
• Strong evangelist for autonomous systems, machine learning, and agentic security workflows.

Responsibilities

• Next-Gen Cyber Operations: strategy for monitoring, detection, and response across consumer-facing internet products at the application level.
• AI & Agentic Automation: deploy autonomous AI agents to manage detection engineering and real-time telemetry enrichment and orchestrate response playbooks.
• Modern Data & Logging Intake: define data ingestion and edge-processing for high-volume internet products with real-time telemetry.
• Major Incident Command: coordinate with cross-functional teams on large-scale security incidents.
• AI-Driven Physical Security: oversee physical security monitoring with computer vision and AI anomaly detection.

Skills

10+ years cybersecurity experience

Technical engineering background

Incident mastery

Visionary mindset

Job description

Responsibilities

About the Team

The USDS JV Threat Detection and Response team is responsible for protecting TikTok’s people, data, and systems from threats that originate within the organization. We partner across Security, Legal, HR, IT, and Engineering to detect, investigate, and mitigate insider risks ranging from data exfiltration and policy violations to fraud and unauthorized access.

About the Role

As the Head of Advanced Threat Management Operations, you will own end-to-end threat defense operations in the JV Secure Environment, spanning both cyber and physical domains. This is a highly technical, visionary leadership role. You will move the organization away from legacy workflows—such as pulling massive data into a centralized Splunk instance before generating alerts—and instead pioneer an agile, decentralized, and intelligent defense model.

You will lead the team into an AI-enabled future where Agentic AI powers the entire threat management lifecycle: from autonomous detection engineering and real‑time case enrichment to automated incident response. Your scope covers product-level application security at internet scale, global logging and data source intake strategy, and a modernized physical threat defense program.

Responsibilities

• Next-Gen Cyber Operations: Drive the strategy for monitoring, detection, and response across our consumer-facing internet products at the application level, moving far beyond standard corporate enterprise security.
• AI & Agentic Automation: Architect and deploy autonomous AI agents to manage detection engineering, execute real-time telemetry enrichment, and orchestrate complex response playbooks.
• Modern Data & Logging Intake: Define the data ingestion and edge-processing strategy tailored for high-volume internet products, optimizing for real-time telemetry without relying on legacy centralized SIEM bottlenecks.
• Major Incident Command: Coordinate with the Head of Cyber Crisis & Critical Incident Manaagement on large-scale, highly complex security incidents across cross-functional engineering and business teams.
• AI-Driven Physical Security: Oversee physical security monitoring operations, shifting the paradigm from manual screen-watching to computer vision and AI‑enabled anomaly detection to optimize resource allocation.

Qualifications

Minium Qualifications

• Experience: 10+ years of dedicated experience in cybersecurity, specifically within the tech industry or high-scale internet product environments.
• Technical Background: A proven, rigorous engineering or highly technical cyber background. You must be able to go deep into application code, distributed systems, and modern cloud architecture.
• Incident Mastery: Proven track record of commanding major, high-stakes security incidents with minimal disruption to global product availability.
• Visionary Mindset: A strong refusal to rely on old ways of thinking; an evangelist for autonomous systems, machine learning, and agentic workflows in security.

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) - Washington, DC

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $ 205920 - $ 397440 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.