Senior Software Engineer, AI Agent and Automation - USDS

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

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) matching

Paid parental leave

Wellbeing programs

Paid holidays

Paid sick days

Paid Personal Time

Job summary

TikTok USDS Joint Venture is seeking a senior software engineer to own the end-to-end roadmap for AI agent workflows within the USDS safety domain. You will design and build core platform components to enable multi-agent coordination, and develop UIs to monitor and debug complex AI workflows.

You will partner with data science teams to integrate LLMs and detection models, ensure robust data pipelines, and translate safety needs into scalable engineering solutions across production systems in a

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science or related field.
• 5+ years building large-scale production systems.
• Backend in Go, Java, or Python with distributed systems experience.
• Frontend experience with TypeScript/React for internal tools.
• Experience integrating LLM/ML capabilities into products.
• Prior 0-to-1 or early-stage builder experience.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end technical roadmap for AI agent workflows within the USDS safety domain.
• Design and build core platform components including agent runtime, state management, and tool-calling frameworks.
• Build modern UIs and workflow editors for monitoring, debugging, and configuring AI workflows.
• Partner with Data Science teams to integrate LLMs and detection models into reusable workflow nodes.
• Drive migration of data pipelines to USDS with 100% recovery for safety-critical services.
• Collaborate with product teams to translate safety needs into scalable engineering solutions.

Job description

Team Intro

We are the TikTok USDS Platform Responsibility - Automation Solutions team. Our mission is to build the foundational AI agent platform and intelligent automation workflows that safeguard the TikTok US ecosystem. Unlike traditional safety tools, we are moving towards an Agentic Future. We develop the "Agentic Service Bot" and "Multi-agent Orchestration" systems that empower Policy, SRE, and Compliance operations to handle complex risks (e.g. Election Safety, Minor Safety) at scale. We bridge the gap between advanced ML models and production-grade operational excellence in the secure TTP environment.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end technical roadmap for AI agent workflows or platforms within the USDS safety domain.
• Design and build core platform components including agent runtime, state management, and tool-calling frameworks to enable multi-agent coordination.
• Build modern UIs and workflow editors that allow operations teams to monitor, debug, and configure complex AI workflows.
• Partner with Data Science teams to integrate LLMs and detection models into reusable workflow nodes with high reliability and low latency.
• Drive the migration of critical data pipelines to USDS and ensure 100% recovery for safety-critical services via robust system design.
• Collaborate closely with product team to identify high-impact automation scenarios and translate ambiguous safety needs into scalable engineering solutions.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, or a related technical field.
• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience building large-scale production systems.
• Strong backend experience in Go (preferred), Java, or Python, with a deep understanding of distributed systems, concurrency, and microservices architecture.
• Hands-on experience with modern web technologies (e.g. TypeScript, React), with the ability to build complex, interactive internal tools.
• Practical experience integrating LLM/ML capabilities into products (e.g. prompt engineering, handling model latency, evaluation flows).
• Prior experience in a 0 to 1 or early-stage builder role, with a track record of shipping ambiguous projects.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building workflow engines (e.g. Temporal, Airflow) or node-based editors (e.g. React Flow).
• Familiarity with applied LLM patterns like RAG, Multi-step Agents, and Tool-calling.
• Prior experience in Trust & Safety, Privacy, or Regulatory engineering is a plus.

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 $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. 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.