Senior Backend Engineer — Governance & IP

TikTok; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 207,000 - 368,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) with company match

Parental leave

Short-term and long-term disability

Job summary

TikTok is seeking a senior backend engineer to own governance and IP protection services for Global E-commerce. You will design scalable systems, lead architecture decisions, and collaborate with product, policy, and legal teams to translate governance policies into robust technical solutions.

You will mentor engineers, drive roadmaps for reliability and performance, and explore LLM-based reviews to improve accuracy and efficiency in takedown workflows.

Qualifications

• 5+ years building highly scalable backend services.
• Demonstrated technical leadership: leading complex projects end-to-end, driving architecture decisions, or mentoring engineers.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts effectively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Own solution design and system architecture for product governance and IPR services - listing risk screening, product quality enforcement, policy-driven review pipelines - and write high-quality code for critical paths.
• Design and evolve IP protection systems end-to-end: rights-holder reporting and brand-protection platforms, notice-and-takedown workflows with SLA guarantees, and proactive infringement detection, in close partnership with legal and policy teams.
• Provide technical leadership across the team: drive design reviews, set engineering standards, and mentor engineers.
• Shape the team's technical roadmap with a focus on scalability, reliability, and measurable governance outcomes (e.g., violation catch rate, takedown SLA, review efficiency, seller and rights-holder experience).
• Partner closely with product managers, policy/operations/legal teams, and algorithm engineers to turn governance and IP policies into effective, low-friction technical solutions.
• Drive pragmatic adoption of LLM and agent-based capabilities in review and takedown workflows where they measurably improve accuracy, coverage, or efficiency.

Skills

Backend scalability

Distributed systems

Technical leadership

Stakeholder communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Job description

TikTok is seeking a senior backend engineer to own governance and IP protection services for Global E-commerce. You will design scalable systems, lead architecture decisions, and collaborate with product, policy, and legal teams to translate governance policies into robust technical solutions.

You will mentor engineers, drive roadmaps for reliability and performance, and explore LLM-based reviews to improve accuracy and efficiency in takedown workflows.