Senior Site Reliability Engineer, Platform Responsibility - USDS

TikTok USDS Joint Venture; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 178,000 - 342,000; Full time

Job summary

TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC is seeking a Senior SRE/DevOps Engineer to manage data services and real-time pipelines, deploying AI agents for automation and incident response. You will own observability stacks, troubleshoot complex production issues, and contribute to long-term platform reliability goals.

The role emphasizes 5+ years in SRE/DevOps, strong Unix/Linux know-how, and experience integrating AI/LLM APIs into internal workflows.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or above in Computer Science or a related technical discipline.
• At least 5 years of professional experience in SRE, DevOps, or Infrastructure Engineering.
• Proven experience integrating AI/LLM APIs into internal workflows for log analysis, alert contextualization, or diagnostic assistance.
• Deep understanding of Unix/Linux system internals, networking fundamentals, and distributed systems architecture.
• Expertise in designing and scaling observability stacks using Prometheus, Grafana, or DataDog.
• Demonstrated ability to troubleshoot complex production issues across the entire stack.

Responsibilities

• Manage day-to-day operations of data services and real-time/batch pipelines with SLA/SLO/SLI management, deployment, performance tuning, and troubleshooting.
• Design and deploy AI agents and LLM-powered automation to streamline incident response and root-cause analysis.
• Create tools to improve system administration and operational efficiency using AI-assisted development tools.
• Participate in regular on-call rotations providing 24-hour coverage across multiple shifts.
• Drive the long-term roadmap for system administration tools and internal platforms to reduce toil.

Skills

SRE/DevOps

AI/LLM integration

Unix/Linux

Observability stack

Incident response

Troubleshooting

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Tools

Prometheus

Grafana

DataDog

Kubernetes

Kafka

Job description

Responsibilities

Team Intro: The Platform Responsibility engineering team is fast growing and responsible for building machine learning models and systems to identify and defend internet abuse and fraud on our platform. Our mission is to protect billions of users and publishers across the globe every day. We embrace the state-of-the-art machine learning technologies and scale them to detect and improve trust and safety system using the tremendous amount of data generated on the platform. With the continuous efforts from our team, TikTok USDS is able to provide the best user experience and bring joy to everyone in the world.

Responsibilities:

• Manage day-to-day operations of data service, realtime/batch data pipelines, such as SLA/SLO/SLI management, system deployment, performance tuning and troubleshooting
• Design and deploy AI Agents and LLM-powered automation to streamline incident response, root cause analysis, and proactive system monitoring
• Create tools and automation to improve system administration and operational efficiency, leveraging AI-assisted development tools to accelerate delivery and code quality
• Participate in regular on-call rotations as part of a team that provides 24 hour coverage across multiple shifts
• Engage in and improve the whole lifecycle of services from inception and design, development, capacity planning, and launch reviews, to deployment, operation, and refinement
• Practice sustainable user support, incident response, and post mortem
• Drive the long-term roadmap for system administration tools. Build internal platforms that leverage AI-assisted development to eliminate toil and improve engineering velocity.
• Serve as a primary Incident Commander for high-severity issues, leading cross-functional teams and ensuring technical resolution aligns with business priorities.
• Partner with Product and Development teams from the design phase to ensure observability, scalability, and disaster recovery are core components of every new feature.
• Foster a culture of sustainable operations by mentoring junior engineers and evangelizing SRE principles throughout the organization.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree or above in Computer Science or a related technical discipline.
• At least 5 years of professional experience in SRE, DevOps, or Infrastructure Engineering.
• Proven experience integrating AI/LLM APIs into internal workflows, specifically for log analysis, alert contextualization, or diagnostic assistance.
• Deep understanding of Unix/Linux system internals, networking fundamentals, and distributed systems architecture.
• Expertise in designing and scaling observability stacks using tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, or DataDog.
• Demonstrated ability to troubleshoot complex, non-obvious production issues across the entire stack.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience building agentic workflows and orchestration frameworks to assist in incident triaging and runbook matching.
• Mastery of AI-assisted development tools to accelerate infrastructure-as-code delivery and automate documentation.
• Deep technical proficiency in container orchestration via Kubernetes and managing big data technologies such as Kafka.

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)

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; and
3. Exercising sound judgment.