Senior Site Reliability Engineer, Compute - USDS

TikTok USDS Joint Venture; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 178,000 - 342,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision insurance

401(k) with company match

Paid parental leave

Disability coverage

Job summary

TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC is seeking a Site Reliability Engineer to help build and run large-scale, fault-tolerant systems. You will automate operations, partner with software teams, and drive reliability across services.

The role emphasizes on-call rotations, performance tuning, and scalable infrastructure to support massive web traffic. You will work with modern stacks (Go/Python) on Linux, collaborate across teams, and participate in defining reliability targets (SLOs/SLIs/SLAs).

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field with 3+ years of experience.
• Proven work experience as an SRE or systems engineer with automation focus.
• Experience with Go/Python and large-scale distributed systems.
• Strong Linux and open-source tech understanding.
• Excellent problem-solving and cross-functional collaboration skills.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain automation procedures to maximize system efficiency and minimize human intervention.
• Work with software engineering teams to design, deploy and operate robust system components.
• Ensure system scalability to handle web traffic and data growth.
• Implement monitoring tools and set up metrics for system health and performance.
• Participate in on-call rotations, incident management, and postmortems.
• Conduct performance tests to identify bottlenecks.
• Define and monitor SLOs, SLIs, and SLAs.
• Foster blameless postmortems and sustainable user support.

Skills

Go

Python

Distributed systems

Linux

Networking

Problem solving

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/IT or related field

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Prometheus

Grafana

Job description

Responsibilities

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) at TikTok combines software and systems engineering to build and run large-scale, massively distributed, and fault-tolerant systems. In our team, you’ll have the opportunity to manage the complex challenges of scale, while using expertise in coding, algorithms, complexity analysis, and large-scale system design. We embrace a culture of diversity, intellectual curiosity, openness, and problem-solving. We encourage close collaboration while promoting self-direction.

• Develop and maintain automation procedures to maximize system efficiency and minimize human intervention.


• Work closely with software engineering teams to design, deploy and operate elements to ensure that systems are functionally robust.


• Ensure system scalability to handle growth in web traffic and data.


• Implement monitoring tools and set up metrics to keep track of system health and performance.


• Participate in on-call rotations, assist with incident management, and diagnose, resolve, and prevent production issues.


• Conduct performance tests to find and address system bottlenecks.


• Collaborate with teams across the organization to define Service Level Objectives (SLOs), Service Level Indicators (SLIs), and Service Level Agreements (SLAs).


• Practice sustainable user support, incident response, and blameless postmortems.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field with 3+ years of experience


• Proven work experience as a Site Reliability Engineer, Systems Engineer, or similar software engineering role.


• Passionate about operational excellence through methodical automation and engineering processes using programming languages such as Go, Python and/or any other languages.


• Experience in network architecture, database modeling, cloud systems and large-scale distributed systems.


• Strong understanding of Linux operating systems and open-source technologies.


• Excellent problem-solving skills, strategic thinking, and a strong ability to debug complex systems.


• Exceptional communication skills and the ability to effectively collaborate with cross-functional teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Knowledge of monitoring tools and methodologies (such as Prometheus, Grafana).


• Experience with containers and container orchestration platforms such as Docker, Kubernetes or equivalent.

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

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $177688 - $341734 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.