Tech Lead, Global E-commerce Governance & IP

TikTok; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 232,560 - 427,500; Full time

Job summary

TikTok is seeking an experienced backend engineer to own governance and IP protection services. You will design scalable systems for listing risk screening, quality enforcement, and review pipelines, collaborating with policy, legal, and product teams to deliver reliable solutions.

The role emphasizes leadership, architecture decisions, and mentoring engineers, with opportunities to apply LLM/agent-based approaches to improve accuracy and efficiency across cross-timezone teams.

Qualifications

• 5+ years building highly scalable backend services and distributed systems.
• Demonstrated technical leadership: leading complex projects end-to-end, mentoring engineers.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience in E-commerce or marketplace platforms, including listing/catalog systems.
• Experience in IP protection, brand protection, anti-counterfeiting, or trust & safety; DMCA knowledge.
• Experience designing and deploying LLM or agent-based solutions with measurable impact.
• Experience working with global, cross-timezone teams.

Responsibilities

• Own solution design and system architecture for product governance and IPR services — listing risk screening, product quality enforcement, policy-driven review pipelines — and write high-quality code for critical paths.
• Design end-to-end IP protection systems: rights-holder reporting and brand-protection platforms, notice-and-takedown workflows with SLA guarantees, and proactive infringement detection, in close partnership with legal and policy teams.
• Provide technical leadership across the team: drive design reviews, set engineering standards, and mentor engineers.
• Shape the team's technical roadmap with a focus on scalability, reliability, and measurable governance outcomes.
• Partner closely with product managers, policy/operations/legal teams, and algorithm engineers to turn governance and IP policies into effective, low-friction technical solutions.
• Drive pragmatic adoption of LLM and agent-based capabilities in review and takedown workflows where they measurably improve accuracy, coverage, or efficiency.

Skills

Backend systems

Distributed systems

Technical leadership

Communication

E-commerce experience

LLM/AI in production

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Job description

TikTok is seeking an experienced backend engineer to own governance and IP protection services. You will design scalable systems for listing risk screening, quality enforcement, and review pipelines, collaborating with policy, legal, and product teams to deliver reliable solutions.

The role emphasizes leadership, architecture decisions, and mentoring engineers, with opportunities to apply LLM/agent-based approaches to improve accuracy and efficiency across cross-timezone teams.