Software Engineer, Data Governance Team

TikTok USDS Joint Venture; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 187,000 - 360,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

401(k) matching

Paid parental leave

Disability coverage

Life insurance

Paid holidays

Job summary

TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC is seeking a Software Engineer - AI Safety to build the platform that enables AI assurance at petabyte scale. You will design the control plane that governs how data flows into models and how model outputs are verified.

Work spans safety checks, real-time policy updates, and automated governance by integrating AI models into the workflow to detect non-compliant data or unsafe model promotions in real time.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field.
• 2+ years of production-level backend development (Go, Java, or C++).
• Experience building high-availability, high-throughput distributed systems.
• Knowledge of GDPR/CCPA privacy considerations is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Design and scale core platforms that orchestrate AI safety checks.
• Build low-latency interception middleware to enforce safety guardrails.
• Develop data governance pipelines for lineage and RTBF workflows.
• Integrate safety models into the governance workflow and monitoring.

Skills

Backend Expertise

Distributed Systems

Foundations

AI/ML Familiarity

Safety & Privacy

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science

Tools

Kafka

Flink

NoSQL

Job description

Responsibilities

About the Team

You will join the TikTok USDS Data Governance and Assurance Engineering team. We are the architects of the foundational infrastructure that manages the entire data lifecycle for one of the world\'s most massive data ecosystems. Our mission is to ensure that every byte of US data is handled with the highest standards of integrity, security, and privacy compliance.

Our team sits at the core of Privacy Engineering and Distributed Systems. We don\'t just write privacy policies; we build the automated engines that enforce them. We are replacing manual oversight with \"Privacy-as-Code,\" ensuring that data privacy is a hard technical guarantee rather than a best-effort guideline.

About the Role

As a Software Engineer - AI Safety, you are the builder of the platform that makes AI assurance possible. You aren\'t just supporting ML; you are architecting the control plane that governs how data flows into models and how model outputs are verified. You will build high-scale systems that integrate AI models (LLMs, Classification models) to automate compliance and data lifecycle management at a petabyte scale.

Core Focus Areas:

• Safety Control Plane: Building the \"mission control\" for AI safety, allowing for real-time policy updates and model-interventions across heterogeneous environments.
• Automated Data Lifecycle: Engineering the systems that manage data inventory, lineage, and residual scanning to ensure training data meets strict privacy and purpose-limitation protocols.
• AI-Powered Governance: Integrating AI models into the governance workflow to automate the detection of non-compliant data or unsafe model \"promotions\" in real-time.

Responsibilities

• Assurance Platform Engineering: Design and scale the core platforms that orchestrate AI safety checks, ensuring that every recommendation signal is auditable and compliant with USDS standards.
• Real-time Interception Systems: Architect low-latency \"circuit breakers\" and middleware that sit within the recommendation path to enforce safety guardrails without impacting user experience.
• High-Scale Data Governance: Build distributed systems for automated data lineage and \"right-to-be-forgotten\" (RTBF) workflows, ensuring that user data is handled correctly throughout the ML training and inference lifecycle.
• Model Integration & Orchestration: Develop the backend services that allow for seamless integration of safety models (e.g., toxicity classifiers, LLM evaluators) into the broader TikTok infrastructure.
• Observability & Risk Telemetry: Build centralized dashboards and alerting engines that provide real-time visibility into the \"safety health\" of our recommendation and GPAI systems.

Qualifications

• Minimum Qualifications:
• - Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field.
• - Backend Expertise: 2+ years of experience in production-level backend development (Go, Java, or C++).
• - Distributed Systems: Proven experience building high-availability, high-throughput systems and managing complex data pipelines (e.g., Kafka, Flink, NoSQL).
• - Foundations: Exceptional understanding of Data Structures, Algorithms, and System Design for massive-scale environments.
• Preferred Qualifications:
• - Safety & Privacy Engineering: Background in building systems for Data Privacy (GDPR/CCPA), Security, or Compliance.
• - AI/ML Familiarity: While this is a SWE role, an understanding

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.

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 - $359720 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.