Senior Software Engineer, Recommendation Engine System

TikTok Inc.; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 218,000 - 388,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) with company match

Parental leave

Disability coverage

Life insurance

Wellbeing benefits

Paid holidays

Sick days

Personal time off

Job summary

TikTok Inc. is seeking a senior software engineer to design, develop, and optimize large-scale recommendation engine systems that power content discovery for millions of users.

You will build high-performance, low-latency infrastructure in C++ and modern frameworks to deliver real-time recommendations. The role emphasizes distributed data processing, model inference, and ongoing performance profiling to maximize efficiency and throughput in a fast-paced environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or above in Computer Science or related field with experience building scalable systems.
• Experience with C++ in large-scale system development.
• Strong understanding of concurrent programming, multi-threading, and distributed systems.
• Experience with high-performance computing and large-scale data processing frameworks.
• Familiarity with system architecture, caching strategies, and performance optimization.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and optimize large-scale recommendation engine systems to enhance content discovery.
• Build and maintain high-performance, low-latency, and scalable infrastructure using C++ and modern system development frameworks.
• Implement multi-threaded and concurrent computing techniques to support real-time recommendations.
• Develop and optimize distributed systems for large-scale data processing and model inference.
• Continuously improve performance and efficiency through profiling, benchmarking, and optimization.

Skills

Large-scale systems design

C++ development

Concurrent programming

Distributed systems

Performance optimization

Real-time inference

High-throughput architectures

GPU acceleration (ML)

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

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:

• Design, develop, and optimize large-scale recommendation engine systems to enhance content discovery.
• Build and maintain high-performance, low-latency, and scalable infrastructure using C++ and modern system development frameworks.
• Implement multi-threaded and concurrent computing techniques to support real-time recommendations.
• Develop and optimize distributed systems for large-scale data processing and model inference.
• Continuously improve performance and efficiency through profiling, benchmarking, and optimization.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or above, majoring in Computer Science or related fields, with experience building scalable system.
• Experiences with C++ in large-scale system development.
• Strong understanding of concurrent programming, multi-threading, and distributed systems.
• Experience with high-performance computing and large-scale data processing frameworks.
• Familiarity with system architecture, caching strategies, and performance optimization.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in recommendation systems, search ranking, or personalization engines.
• Proficiency in big data processing frameworks (e.g., Flink, Spark, Hadoop) and real-time data pipelines.
• Experience with high-throughput, low-latency system design.
• Knowledge of GPU acceleration for ML inference is a plus.

Job Information

[For Pay Transparency] Compensation Description (annually)

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $218400 - $387600 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.

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:

• Design, develop, and optimize large-scale recommendation engine systems to enhance content discovery.
• Build and maintain high-performance, low-latency, and scalable infrastructure using C++ and modern system development frameworks.
• Implement multi-threaded and concurrent computing techniques to support real-time recommendations.
• Develop and optimize distributed systems for large-scale data processing and model inference.
• Continuously improve performance and efficiency through profiling, benchmarking, and optimization.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or above, majoring in Computer Science or related fields, with experience building scalable system.
• Experiences with C++ in large-scale system development.
• Strong understanding of concurrent programming, multi-threading, and distributed systems.
• Experience with high-performance computing and large-scale data processing frameworks.
• Familiarity with system architecture, caching strategies, and performance optimization.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in recommendation systems, search ranking, or personalization engines.
• Proficiency in big data processing frameworks (e.g., Flink, Spark, Hadoop) and real-time data pipelines.
• Experience with high-throughput, low-latency system design.
• Knowledge of GPU acceleration for ML inference is a plus.