Senior Software Engineer, Ranking Engineering

TikTok Inc.; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 218,000 - 480,000; Full time

Job summary

TikTok Inc. is seeking an experienced software engineer to architect, build, and optimize large-scale ranking systems that deliver billions of daily recommendations with low latency.

You will design scalable ranking frameworks, collaborate with ML engineers to productionize models, and push performance optimizations across CPU/GPU, memory, and networking. Join a team focused on technical excellence and reliable systems for a fast-paced, data-driven product used by millions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field.
• Experience in building large-scale recommendation, ranking, or search systems.
• Experience in C++, Go, or Python, and with distributed computing frameworks.
• Solid understanding of ranking algorithms, machine learning inference systems, and system performance optimization.

Responsibilities

• Architect, build, and optimize large-scale ranking systems that serve billions of daily recommendations with low latency and high precision.
• Design flexible, efficient, and scalable ranking frameworks to support evolving ML models and features.
• Collaborate with ML engineers to integrate ranking models into production, ensuring seamless inference, freshness, and feedback loops.
• Analyze system bottlenecks and apply performance optimizations at the framework and infrastructure level (CPU/GPU, memory, storage, networking).
• Drive technical excellence and best practices in software design, code quality, and system reliability.

Skills

Ranking algorithms

ML inference

C++/Go/Python

Distributed computing

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in CS/EE or related

Job description

Responsibilities

About The Team

TikTok's recommendation system is at the core of our user experience, delivering personalized content to millions of users in real time. Our Recommendation Architecture Team is responsible for building up and optimizing the architecture for our recommendation system to provide the most stable and best experience for our TikTok users.

What you will be doing:

• Architect, build, and optimize large-scale ranking systems that serve billions of daily recommendations with low latency and high precision.
• Design flexible, efficient, and scalable ranking frameworks to support evolving machine learning models and features.
• Collaborate with ML engineers to integrate ranking models into production, ensuring seamless inference, freshness, and feedback loops.
• Analyze system bottlenecks and apply performance optimizations at the framework and infrastructure level (CPU/GPU, memory, storage, networking).
• Drive technical excellence and best practices in software design, code quality, and system reliability.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field.
• Experience in building large-scale recommendation, ranking, or search systems.
• Experience in C++, Go, or Python, and with distributed computing frameworks.
• Solid understanding of ranking algorithms, machine learning inference systems, and system performance optimization.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in machine learning platform infrastructure, particularly online prediction serving or ranking pipelines.
• Familiarity with feature engineering pipelines, model lifecycle management, and A/B testing systems.
• Experience working with multi-threading, memory management, and low-latency service architectures.
• Proven ability to lead complex projects across multiple teams and stakeholders.

Job Information

For Pay Transparency: Compensation Description (annually)

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $218400 - $480000 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.