Tech Lead, AI Infra Site Reliability Engineer - USDS

TikTok USDS Joint Venture; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 187,040 - 438,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) savings plan with company match

Paid parental leave

17 days of paid personal time

Job summary

TikTok USDS Joint Venture in San Jose seeks an experienced Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) to enhance the infrastructure of large-scale recommendation and search systems. This role demands a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and over five years of SRE experience, focusing on operational reliability and system performance.

Competitive compensation ranges from $187,040 to $438,000 annually, with benefits including medical insurance and paid leave, emphasizing TikTok’s commitment to employee well-being.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in SRE of large-scale systems.
• Experience in designing and analyzing large-scale distributed systems.
• Prior experience in SRE for recommendation systems is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Engage in the whole lifecycle of recommendation and search systems.
• Deliver tools/software to improve reliability and scalability.
• Practice sustainable incident response and post-mortems.

Skills

Linux system operation skills

Programming in Python

Troubleshooting large-scale distributed systems

Familiar with CI/CD procedures

Effective communication skills

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related fields

Tools

Python

Perl

Go

C/C++

Job description

Responsibilities

About the team: The USDS JV AI Infra SRE team works with engineering and product teams to build and run large‑scale, globally distributed, observable, fault‑tolerant systems for TikTok state‑of‑the‑art recommendation and search engines. SREs on this team will deliver on production ownership and be responsible for observability and automation across complex, large‑scale service mesh architectures.

• Engage in and improve the whole lifecycle of recommendation and search systems—from system design consulting through to launch reviews, deployment, operation and refinement
• Deliver tools/software to improve the reliability and scalability of services, automate operations and improve R&D efficiency
• Build availability of large‑scale services deployed across global data centers
• Plan, manage and optimize cloud resources utilization, ensuring SLA of large‑scale clusters
• Measure and monitor availability, latency and overall service health
• Practice sustainable incident response and post‑mortems

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or above majoring in Computer Science or related fields, with 5+ years of related work experience
• Experience in SRE of large‑scale systems deployment with high reliability and scalability
• Familiar with system operation skills in Linux and network
• Experience programming in at least one of the following languages: Python, Perl, Go, or C/C++
• Experience in designing, analyzing and troubleshooting large‑scale distributed systems
• Familiar with popular CI/CD procedures and environments
• Effective communication skills and a sense of ownership and drive

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior experience in SRE for recommendation systems, search, or advertising platforms
• Familiarity with the ML lifecycle and inference engines

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, 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 $187,040 ‑ $438,000 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
• Exercising sound judgment