SRE Tech Lead Manager, Product - USDS

TikTok USDS Joint Venture; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 198,000 - 416,000; Full time

Job summary

TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC is seeking a Senior SRE leader to own production reliability for large-scale, globally distributed services. You will mentor a team of SREs, drive decisions for service mesh architectures, and establish ownership models and SLOs to improve incident response and availability.

The role emphasizes security collaboration, roadmap development for observability and automation, and balancing hands-on coding with people management and career growth.

Qualifications

• 5+ years designing, analyzing, and troubleshooting large-scale distributed systems.
• Experience leading a small-to-mid-size team with hands-on contributions.
• Strong Unix/Linux knowledge and networking fundamentals.
• Production-grade coding in Go, Python, Java or similar.
• Proven SRE best-practices adoption, SLOs and incident management.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to a team of Site Reliability Engineers.
• Drive architectural decisions for large-scale, globally distributed service mesh architectures.
• Establish production ownership models, incident response protocols, and SLOs.
• Develop strategic roadmaps for observability and automation to boost reliability.
• Balance technical contributions with people management, career development, and performance reviews.
• Foster reliability culture and knowledge sharing within the team and across the org.
• Lead security initiatives with security and compliance teams to protect data and meet regulations.

Skills

SRE Leadership

Cloud Native

Observability

Go/Python/Java

Job description

Responsibilities

Team Intro:

The USDS TikTok Product Engineering SRE team works with engineering and product teams to build, maintain and run large-scale, globally distributed, observable, fault-tolerant systems. SREs on this team will deliver on production ownership and be responsible for observability and automation across complex, large-scale service mesh architectures.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to a team of Site Reliability Engineers focused on building observable, fault-tolerant systems
• Drive architectural decisions for large-scale, globally distributed service mesh architectures
• Establish and maintain production ownership models, incident response protocols, and service level objectives
• Develop strategic roadmaps for observability and automation initiatives that enhance system reliability
• Balance technical contributions with people management responsibilities, including career development, performance evaluations, and team growth
• Foster a culture of reliability, continuous improvement, and knowledge sharing within your team and across the organization
• Lead security initiatives to safeguard critical assets, partnering with security and compliance teams to implement robust protocols that ensure data protection and regulatory compliance across all services

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience and expertise in designing, analyzing, and troubleshooting large-scale distributed systems, relational databases, caching solutions and web service frameworks
• Previous experience leading a small to mid-size team while maintaining significant \"hands-on\" technical contributions
• Strong understanding of Unix/Linux operating systems internals and networking fundamentals
• Proficiency in writing production-grade code in Go, Python, Java or similar languages
• Proven track record of establishing and implementing SRE best practices across engineering organizations
• Experience developing and maintaining service level objectives (SLOs) and error budgets

Preferred Qualifications

• Deep expertise in algorithms, data structures, and systems design with proven ability to architect complex technical solutions
• Track record of developing sophisticated automation tools and developer-friendly APIs that streamline operations and eliminate toil
• Extensive experience running high-availability web services at massive scale, with comprehensive knowledge of cloud-native architectures and advanced networking concepts

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 $198360 - $416100 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.