Senior Backend Engineer — Governance & IP

TikTok; San Jose, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 218,000 - 388,000; Full time

Job summary

TikTok is seeking a Senior Backend Software Engineer for Global E-commerce Governance. Based in San Jose, you will own design/architecture for product governance and IP protection services, build scalable backend systems, and mentor engineers.

Collaboration with policy, product, and legal teams will shape practical, high-impact solutions. Ideal candidates have 5+ years building scalable backends, strong leadership, and experience in e-commerce or trust & safety domains.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field.
• 5+ years building highly scalable backend services and distributed systems.
• Demonstrated technical leadership: leading complex projects end-to-end, mentoring engineers.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience in E-commerce or marketplace platforms (preferred).
• Experience in IP protection, brand protection, or trust & safety domains (preferred).
• Experience designing and deploying LLM or agent-based solutions (preferred).

Responsibilities

• Own solution design and architecture for governance and IPR services and write high-quality code for critical paths.
• Design and evolve IP protection systems end-to-end with SLA guarantees.
• Provide technical leadership across the team: drive design reviews and set standards.
• Shape the technical roadmap with a focus on scalability, reliability and governance metrics.
• Partner with product, policy, and algorithm teams to implement policy-driven solutions.
• Drive adoption of LLM/agent-based capabilities in review workflows when beneficial.

Skills

Backend services

Distributed systems

Technical leadership

Communication

E-commerce experience

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Job description

TikTok is seeking a Senior Backend Software Engineer for Global E-commerce Governance. Based in San Jose, you will own design/architecture for product governance and IP protection services, build scalable backend systems, and mentor engineers.

Collaboration with policy, product, and legal teams will shape practical, high-impact solutions. Ideal candidates have 5+ years building scalable backends, strong leadership, and experience in e-commerce or trust & safety domains.