Senior Design Engineer (Founding Engineer) - TikTok

TikTok Inc.; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 122,000 - 272,000; Full time

Job summary

TikTok Inc. in San Jose, CA seeks a highly experienced UX Engineer to advance the design-to-engineering workflow and oversee a design system-driven product experience.

You will partner with product designers and client engineers to streamline handoffs and drive production-quality implementations that improve user experience. You will also shape AI tooling, build agent-based features, and help define the technical direction across design and product teams, translating design intent into scalable

Qualifications

• With engineering experience shipping production mobile or full-stack systems.
• Full-stack capability with deep expertise in at least one mobile stack (iOS/Swift, SwiftUI or Android/Kotlin, Compose) and working knowledge of backend.
• Deep, hands-on use of AI coding agents (Cursor, Claude Code, etc.) with efficient token budgeting, agentic workflows, and a track record of shipping with them; products you built independently end-to-end strongly preferred.
• Experience building or shipping AI product features or agent-based workflows.
• Ability to solve complex problems with simple solutions.
• Founding or early-team experience, or clear evidence of having shaped a team/practice from scratch.
• Strong product thinking, able to drive ambiguous problems all the way to shipped impact.

Responsibilities

• Reshape the design-to-engineering workflow - Partner with product designers and client engineers to identify friction in the handoff, and close the gap through better processes and shared practices.
• Explore aggressively - Run multiple feasibility tracks for new workflows and tooling in parallel, rather than picking one and grinding.
• Close the loop into production - Lead how design-delivered code integrates with the mainline codebase, partnering with engineering to systematize design system components, performance, and accessibility into production-quality implementations that improve user experience.
• Build AI design tooling - Architect and ship internal AI tooling (agents, design system plugins, code-generation pipelines, prototyping platforms) that lets every designer move from idea to high-fidelity prototype to shippable code with leverage.
• Drive technical direction across design and product - Partner with engineering leads on architecture, design system evolution, and tooling roadmap. Translate design intent into engineering trade-offs, and vice versa.

Skills

Mobile & full-stack experience

iOS/Swift or Android/Kotlin

AI coding agents

AI product features

Problem solving

Founding/early-team

Product thinking

Tools

Cursor

Claude Code

Job description

Responsibilities

About the team

TikTok UX team is responsible for the product design of the TikTok app. Our key vertical ownership areas include Core app Product Infrastructure, Social, Creation, and Design Systems. Providing professional design methods and practices, the team helps improve user experience and working efficiency of these products and areas.

1. 1. Reshape the design-to-engineering workflow - Partner with product designers and client engineers to identify friction in the handoff, and close the gap through better processes and shared practices
2. 2. Explore aggressively - Run multiple feasibility tracks for new workflows and tooling in parallel, rather than picking one and grinding
3. 3. Close the loop into production - Lead how design-delivered code integrates with the mainline codebase, partnering with engineering to systematize design system components, performance, and accessibility into production-quality implementations that improve user experience
4. 4. Build AI design tooling - Architect and ship internal AI tooling (agents, design system plugins, code-generation pipelines, prototyping platforms) that lets every designer move from idea to high-fidelity prototype to shippable code with leverage
5. 5. Drive technical direction across design and product - Partner with engineering leads on architecture, design system evolution, and tooling roadmap. Translate design intent into engineering trade-offs, and vice versa

Responsibilities

About the team

TikTok UX team is responsible for the product design of the TikTok app. Our key vertical ownership areas include Core app Product Infrastructure, Social, Creation, and Design Systems. Providing professional design methods and practices, the team helps improve user experience and working efficiency of these products and areas.

1. 1. Reshape the design-to-engineering workflow - Partner with product designers and client engineers to identify friction in the handoff, and close the gap through better processes and shared practices
2. 2. Explore aggressively - Run multiple feasibility tracks for new workflows and tooling in parallel, rather than picking one and grinding
3. 3. Close the loop into production - Lead how design-delivered code integrates with the mainline codebase, partnering with engineering to systematize design system components, performance, and accessibility into production-quality implementations that improve user experience
4. 4. Build AI design tooling - Architect and ship internal AI tooling (agents, design system plugins, code-generation pipelines, prototyping platforms) that lets every designer move from idea to high-fidelity prototype to shippable code with leverage
5. 5. Drive technical direction across design and product - Partner with engineering leads on architecture, design system evolution, and tooling roadmap. Translate design intent into engineering trade-offs, and vice versa

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• - With engineering experience shipping production mobile or full-stack systems
• - Full-stack capability, with deep expertise in at least one mobile stack (iOS / Swift, SwiftUI or Android / Kotlin, Compose) and working knowledge of backend (APIs, services, data layer)
• - Deep, hands-on use of AI coding agents (Cursor, Claude Code, etc.) with efficient token budgeting, agentic workflows, and a track record of shipping with them; products you built independently end-to-end strongly preferred
• - Experience building or shipping AI product features or agent-based workflows
• - Ability to solve complex problems with simple solutions
• - Founding or early-team experience, or clear evidence of having shaped a team/practice from scratch
• - Strong product thinking, able to drive ambiguous problems all the way to shipped impact

Preferred Qualifications

• - Background spanning both design and engineering (designer-turned-engineer, or engineer with formal design training or shipped design work)
• - Public craft signal - open source contributions, conference talks, published tooling, or a notable public presence around your work
• - Experience with Lynx, or other cross-platform mobile frameworks
• - Experience shipping social, creator, or content products at scale
• - Passion for TikTok and creator communities

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• - With engineering experience shipping production mobile or full-stack systems
• - Full-stack capability, with deep expertise in at least one mobile stack (iOS / Swift, SwiftUI or Android / Kotlin, Compose) and working knowledge of backend (APIs, services, data layer)
• - Deep, hands-on use of AI coding agents (Cursor, Claude Code, etc.) with efficient token budgeting, agentic workflows, and a track record of shipping with them; products you built independently end-to-end strongly preferred
• - Experience building or shipping AI product features or agent-based workflows
• - Ability to solve complex problems with simple solutions
• - Founding or early-team experience, or clear evidence of having shaped a team/practice from scratch
• - Strong product thinking, able to drive ambiguous problems all the way to shipped impact

Preferred Qualifications

• - Background spanning both design and engineering (designer-turned-engineer, or engineer with formal design training or shipped design work)
• - Public craft signal - open source contributions, conference talks, published tooling, or a notable public presence around your work
• - Experience with Lynx, or other cross-platform mobile frameworks
• - Experience shipping social, creator, or content products at scale
• - Passion for TikTok and creator communities

Job Information

[For Pay Transparency] Compensation Description (annually)

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $121600 - $272000 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:

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; and
3. Exercising sound judgment.