Senior Site Reliability Engineer, Product - USDS

TikTok USDS Joint Venture; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 187,000 - 438,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

401(k) with company match

Paid parental leave

Short-term disability

Long-term disability

Life insurance

Wellbeing benefits

Paid holidays

Job summary

TikTok USDS Joint Venture is seeking a Senior Site Reliability Engineer to help manage and optimize the reliability of large-scale distributed services in a fast-paced, security-conscious environment.

The role emphasizes reducing outages, improving performance, and driving automation across Unix/Linux based infrastructure. On-site work is expected as the team evolves toward full in-person collaboration.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field with 5+ years in deploying and administering large-scale distributed systems.
• Strong understanding of Unix/Linux internals, networking, storage and database systems.
• Experience with one or more languages such as C/C++, Java, Python, Go, Ruby, Rust, or JavaScript.
• Experience debugging, optimizing code and automating routine tasks.
• Experience with Nginx, Kubernetes, Docker, OpenStack, Hadoop, Spark, Flink or Kafka.
• Experience designing and analyzing large-scale distributed systems is a plus.
• Strong problem solving and communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Gain understanding of components and services powering TikTok.
• Maintain services to meet SLAs and SLOs by monitoring availability and performance.
• Support site-up issues as part of a global team to ensure reliability and cost-effectiveness.
• Scale sustainability through automation and system improvements.
• Provide user support, incident responses and postmortems.

Skills

Distributed systems

Unix/Linux

Networking

Programming languages

Debug & automation

Education

Bachelor's in CS

Tools

Nginx

Kubernetes

Docker

OpenStack

Hadoop

Spark

Flink

Kafka

Job description

Responsibilities

About the team

• Gain a solid understanding of the various components and services that power the TikTok experience
• Maintain services to meet service-level-agreements (SLAs) and service-level-objectives (SLOs) by measuring and monitoring availability, performance, and overall system health
• Participate as part of a global team to support site-up issues to ensure that services are reliable, fault-tolerant, efficiently scalable and cost-effective
• Scale systems sustainability through mechanisms such as automation; evolve systems reliability, efficiency, and velocity by pushing for changes
• Provide user support, incident responses and postmortems

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's or above degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline with 5+ years experience in the deployment and administration of large-scale distributed systems
• Strong understanding of Unix/Linux operating systems internals and administration, networking (e.g. TCP/IP, routing, network topologies and hardware), storage systems, and database systems
• Experience in one or more programming languages, such as C, C++, Java, Python, Go, Ruby, Rust, JavaScript
• Experience in debugging and optimizing code and automate routine tasks
• Experience in development, testing, deployment and administration of one or more of the following types of systems: Nginx, Kubernetes, Docker, OpenStack, Hadoop, Spark, Flink, Kafka
• Experience in designing and analyzing large-scale distributed systems is preferred
• Strong skills in problem solving and communication

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 $187040 - $438000 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.

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.