Software Engineer, Data Protection

TikTok Inc.; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 246,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) matching

Paid parental leave

Disability coverage

Life insurance

Wellbeing benefits

Paid holidays

Paid sick days

Paid personal time

Job summary

TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC is seeking a Software Engineer to build the data protection platform, focusing on backend services, data pipelines, and workflow automation across enterprise systems.

You will collaborate with security, IT, Insider Security, and data platform teams to make data protection capabilities scalable, reliable, and measurable, turning protection requirements into production software that connects systems and automates workflows.

Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Backend Engineering: 2+ years building production-grade backend services and APIs using Go, Java, or C++ (Go preferred).
• Distributed Systems: Knowledge of asynchronous processing, service-to-service communication, and failure modes with retries and idempotency.
• Big Data & Infrastructure: Experience with high-volume data ecosystems or cloud-native infra (Hive, Spark, Kafka, Flink, Kubernetes).
• Database Engineering: Solid understanding of SQL and NoSQL databases, indexing, partitioning, transactions, and data retention.
• Software Delivery: Experience with automated testing, version control, CI/CD, and production troubleshooting.
• Collaboration: Able to translate requirements into practical designs and communicate with engineers, security, and business stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain backend services and APIs for data protection capabilities (discovery, classification, policy lifecycle).
• Develop integrations with enterprise DLP platforms, data infrastructure, identity services, and case-management systems.
• Build reusable platform capabilities for configuration management, auditable workflows, and deployment changes.
• Design data models and storage for protection metadata, security events, and audit records.

Skills

Go

Java

C++

Backend services

Distributed systems

Big data如

CI/CD

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in CS or related field

Tools

Hive

Spark

Kafka

Flink

Kubernetes

Job description

Responsibilities

The Data Protection team safeguards user data, business data, confidential company information, intellectual property, and other data requiring protection against unauthorized disclosure and exfiltration. We build and operate the platforms, data pipelines, and controls that help teams understand data risks and protect sensitive information across enterprise systems.

Our focus is on effective, practical protection: understanding how data is accessed, used, and shared; applying controls appropriate to its sensitivity and risk; and enabling reliable, scalable security workflows without unnecessarily disrupting legitimate work.

We are looking for a Software Engineer to build the engineering foundation of our Data Protection program. This is a software development role focused on backend services, data pipelines, platform integrations, and workflow automation.

You will turn data protection requirements into production software that connects enterprise systems, processes security and data lifecycle signals, and automates operational workflows. You will work closely with Data Security Engineers, IT, Insider Security, and data platform teams to make data protection capabilities more scalable, reliable, and measurable.

Data Protection Platform Engineering

• Design, build, and maintain backend services and APIs for data protection capabilities, including data discovery and classification, protection coverage tracking, and policy lifecycle management.
• Develop integrations with enterprise DLP platforms, data infrastructure, identity services, and case-management systems through APIs, event streams, and connectors.
• Build reusable platform capabilities that enable security engineers to manage configurations, validate controls, and deploy changes through version-controlled, auditable workflows.
• Design data models and storage systems for protection metadata, security events, workflow state, and audit records, with appropriate access and retention controls.

Data Pipelines and Processing

• Build and operate batch and streaming pipelines to ingest, normalize, enrich, and correlate data protection signals across enterprise systems.
• Integrate data ownership, classification, access, and lineage context to support risk assessment, detection, and investigation workflows.
• Implement reliable processing with schema validation, deduplication, retries, replay, and mechanisms to handle late or out-of-order events where needed.
• Optimize pipeline throughput, latency, and storage costs while maintaining data quality and limiting unnecessary collection or exposure of sensitive data.

Workflow Automation

• Develop workflow orchestration for policy validation, event enrichment, alert routing, exception management, and remediation tracking.
• Integrate automated workflows with approval processes and human review where actions may affect business operations or access to data.
• Build reliable execution using idempotent operations, bounded retries, failure recovery, and auditable state transitions.

Reliability and Engineering Ownership

• Own features from requirements and technical design through implementation, testing, deployment, and production support.
• Build observability for services, connectors, pipelines, and workflows, including metrics, logs, dashboards, and actionable alerts.
• Write automated tests and use CI/CD, staged rollouts, and rollback strategies to deliver changes safely.
• Investigate production issues, address performance and reliability bottlenecks, and maintain technical documentation and operational runbooks.
• Collaborate with security and infrastructure partners to translate data protection needs into clear interfaces, service expectations, and maintainable software.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Backend Engineering: 2+ years of professional software engineering experience using Go (Golang), Java, or C++, with Go preferred. Experience building and maintaining production backend services and APIs.
• Distributed Systems: Working knowledge of asynchronous processing, service-to-service communication, and distributed system failure modes, including retries, idempotency, and consistency trade-offs.
• Big Data & Infrastructure: Experience working with high-volume data ecosystems or cloud-native infrastructure, such as Hive, Spark, Kafka, Flink, or Kubernetes; expertise in every listed technology is not required.
• Database Engineering: Strong understanding of database design, SQL, and NoSQL systems, including indexing, partitioning, transactions, and how data is physically stored, retained, and deleted.
• Software Delivery: Experience with automated testing, version control, code review, CI/CD, and production troubleshooting.
• Collaboration: Ability to translate requirements into practical technical designs and communicate clearly with engineering, security, and business stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• Data Protection & Privacy: Prior experience in data protection, DLP, privacy engineering, GDPR/CCPA-related technical controls, or data governance.
• Security Engineering: Understanding of encryption at rest and in transit, identity and access management (IAM), least privilege, secrets management, and audit logging.
• Workflow Orchestration: Experience with workflow engines such as Temporal or Airflow, or with building durable, event-driven automation across multiple systems.
• Enterprise Integrations: Experience integrating security platforms, SaaS applications, identity providers, or case-management systems, including handling API rate limits and connector failures.
• Classification & Enrichment: Experience integrating data classification, content inspection, or LLM-based analysis into production services, with appropriate evaluation and safeguards for sensitive data, reliability, latency, and cost.

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 $129960 - $246240 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.