Sr. Software Engineer - Data Subject Rights - TikTok Privacy and Security

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

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) with company match

Paid parental leave

Disability coverage

Job summary

TikTok Inc. is seeking a senior backend engineer to design and build privacy-focused data systems at scale from San Jose, CA.

You will own end-to-end privacy controls across data lifecycle, consent, and DSR workflows, partnering with product, legal, and engineering teams. You will work on complex data systems, implement privacy protections, and contribute to AI governance and privacy-preserving technologies across global products.

Qualifications

• Experience building backend services for large-scale consumer-facing products.
• Proficiency in at least one of Java, Go, C++, or Python.
• Strong fundamentals in data structures, algorithms, and backend system design.
• Ability to make sound judgments on business and compliance tradeoffs, and to plan and deliver work end to end.
• Experience working with partner teams across organizations, and communicating clearly to land a shared technical decision.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and evolve backend systems that improve privacy across TikTok, turning requirements into platform capabilities.
• Carry work end to end: problem framing, technical design, delivery, launch, adoption.
• Partner across product, legal, policy, data, and engineering teams to land privacy capabilities in products and data systems.
• Work with data lifecycle: collection, storage, use, sharing, retention, and deletion, linking controls to product operation.
• Use data analysis to measure privacy coverage, risk, and business impact; extend capabilities to new scenarios.
• Build and operate high-scale backend services and participate in privacy incident response.

Skills

Backend systems

Data structures

Algorithms

System design

Java

Go

C++

Python

Judgment calls

Communication

Education

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

Job description

Responsibilities

The TikTok Privacy and Security (PnS) R&D team creates privacy solutions that are intuitive for users, auditable for regulators, and sustainable for the company, making TikTok a platform where people can safely discover, create, and connect.

We build user-facing privacy features, including privacy settings, consent management, data access and export, and age-appropriate experiences. We protect personal data across its full lifecycle, from collection and transfer through access, storage, retention, and deletion. We develop the platforms, technical controls, and governance tools behind privacy protection and regulatory compliance in global markets, and we bring privacy-enhancing technologies and research into production at scale.

We tackle challenges unique to operating a platform at global scale: translating rapidly evolving laws and policies into reliable technical controls, providing transparency and auditability across highly complex data systems, supporting different regulatory requirements across regions, and making privacy protection work at the quality and speed production systems demand.

You will work across product privacy, data lifecycle management, data protection and residency, privacy engineering platforms, AI governance, and privacy-preserving technologies, using techniques including automated compliance enforcement, data lineage and taxonomy, differential privacy, trusted execution environments, AI fairness, and privacy protection for generative AI. The systems you build will protect hundreds of millions of people, and the privacy decisions you make will reach every one of them.

The TikTok Privacy and Security Product DSR team builds the platform behind data subject requests: the rights users exercise to access, delete, correct, or export their data. The team turns those rights into systems that run accurately, on time, and at global scale, across the products and data stores where that data actually lives. In this role, you will design and build core DSR systems, apply judgment where business goals and compliance meet, and take that work end to end with partner teams.

• Design, build, and evolve backend systems that improve privacy across TikTok, and help turn repeated requirements into shared platform capabilities.
• Make sound business and compliance judgments in the systems you own, and carry the work end to end: problem framing, technical design, delivery, launch, and adoption.
• Partner across product, legal, policy, data, and engineering teams. Align on requirements and tradeoffs, and land privacy capabilities in the products and data systems that depend on them.
• Work with data and its lifecycle. Implement how data is collected, stored, used, shared, retained, and deleted, and connect those controls to how products operate.
• Use data analysis and data processing to measure privacy coverage, risk, and business impact, and extend privacy capabilities into new scenarios and product lines.
• Build and operate high-scale backend services, and take part in privacy incident response, including scope, root cause, and remediation.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualification(s)

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience building backend services for large-scale, consumer-facing products.
• A solid grasp of data, its lifecycle, and how data systems support the business.
• Ability to make sound judgments on business and compliance tradeoffs, and to plan and deliver work end to end.
• Experience working with partner teams across organizations, and communicating clearly enough to land a shared technical decision.
• Proficiency in at least one of Java, Go, C++, or Python.
• Strong fundamentals in data structures, algorithms, and backend system design.

Preferred Qualification(s)

• Experience on a large platform, such as infrastructure, ads, recommendation, or an open platform.
• Experience contributing to longer-term platform planning, or turning fragmented capabilities into a shared service.
• Hands-on experience with data analysis and data processing, and with using those skills to support new business use cases.
• Experience designing or implementing privacy, data governance, or trust and safety features.
• Experience operating systems at very large consumer scale.

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:

• Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;
• Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and
• Exercising sound judgment.