Tech Lead / Principal Engineer, Creator Agent Algorithm Infrastructure Seattle Regular

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

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) savings plan with company match

10 paid holidays per year

Paid parental leave

Job summary

ByteDance in Seattle is looking for a Tech Lead / Principal Engineer to drive the architectural development of Agent algorithm infrastructure. You will lead key projects in optimizing agent capabilities while ensuring alignment with business insights and B2B user needs.

The ideal candidate will have extensive experience with Agent optimization and collaboration across teams. This role includes a competitive salary range of $232560 to $427500 annually, along with comprehensive benefits.

Qualifications

• Deep understanding of B2B / ToB businesses.
• Able to reason about algorithm infrastructure from B2B-specific angles.
• Able to identify directions with real business value.

Responsibilities

• Lead the architectural development of core Agent algorithm capabilities.
• Continuously track and bring frontier Agent optimization directions into the team.
• Judge investment directions and adapt them based on business realities.
• Develop deep understanding of creators as B2B user groups.

Skills

Deep understanding of the Agent technical stack

Hands-on experience with LangGraph

Systematic understanding of Agent optimization

Familiarity with Agentic Search design

Technical judgment and forward-looking perspective

Outstanding cross-team collaboration skills

Job description

Tech Lead / Principal Engineer, Creator Agent Algorithm Infrastructure

Location: Seattle

Team: Technology

Employment Type: Regular

Job Code: A184994A

Responsibilities

1. Lead the architectural development of core Agent algorithm capabilities, including but not limited to:
   • Agent orchestration framework: Build agent orchestration capabilities supporting complex business logic, based on LangGraph or in‑house frameworks.
   • Agentic Search: Build intelligent retrieval architecture tailored to creator scenarios, enabling the Agent to proactively and iteratively gather information from product, creator, and content corpora.
   • Hierarchical memory systems: Design short-term, long-term, and episodic memory mechanisms, providing the algorithm team with foundational capabilities for personalized creator understanding.
   • Algorithm tuning infrastructure: Provide efficient training, evaluation, and iteration infrastructure for Agent RL, Memory RL, SFT, and additional frontier optimization directions.
2. Continuously track and bring frontier Agent optimization directions into the team, including but not limited to:
   • Test‑time / inference‑time optimization (self‑refine, reflection, tree search, process reward model–guided reasoning, etc.)
   • Tool use optimization (tool‑use SFT, tool‑use trajectory RL, tool selection optimization)
   • Multi‑agent collaboration and deliberation
   • Automated prompt / workflow optimization (e.g., DSPy, TextGrad — "gradient‑style" optimization of prompts and workflows)
   • Agent distillation into smaller, more efficient models
   • Agent evaluation and reward modeling (LLM‑as‑Judge, PRMs, Agent benchmark design, etc.)
3. Judge which directions are worth investing in and translate them into team capabilities based on team and business realities.
4. Track the latest Agent architectures from OpenAI, Anthropic, and others, and adapt them deeply to our creator business.
5. Partner deeply with the Algorithm team — ensures that algorithm infrastructure accelerates rather than bottlenecks algorithmic innovation.
6. Develop deep understanding of creators as a B2B user group and translate business insights into algorithm infrastructure decisions.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

1. Deep understanding of the Agent technical stack — familiarity with the architectural approaches of frontier Agent practices such as OpenAI SDK and Claude Code, and a clear point of view on the capability boundaries and algorithmic challenges of Agents.
2. Hands‑on experience with LangGraph (or equivalent frameworks) for building production‑grade, domain‑customized agents.
3. Systematic understanding of Agent optimization — familiarity with the foundational directions (Agent RL, hierarchical memory and Memory RL, SFT), plus hands‑on practice or deep familiarity with at least 2‑3 frontier directions (e.g., test‑time optimization, tool‑use optimization, multi‑agent collaboration, automated prompt/workflow optimization, Agent distillation, Agent evaluation).
4. Familiarity with Agentic Search design and implementation, with a clear understanding of the paradigm shift from traditional retrieval to agent‑driven retrieval.
5. Deep understanding of B2B / ToB businesses — able to reason about algorithm infrastructure from B2B‑specific angles (user workflows, ROI, explainability, controllability) rather than directly applying consumer‑product intuitions.
6. Technical judgment and forward‑looking perspective — able to identify directions with real business value in a rapidly evolving Agent landscape, and bring fresh thinking to the team.
7. Outstanding cross‑team collaboration skills — able to build a deep partnership with the product, algorithm and other cooperation engineer teams and drive complex algorithm projects to high‑quality delivery.

Preferred Qualifications

1. End‑to‑end experience building LLM‑powered (especially Agent) algorithm infrastructure from 0 to 1.
2. Deep hands‑on experience with RL / RLHF / DPO / GRPO and other LLM alignment techniques.
3. Hands‑on exploration or published work in test‑time scaling, process reward models, or Agent self‑improvement.
4. Practical experience with automated prompt / workflow optimization (DSPy, TextGrad, etc.).
5. Experience with algorithm infrastructure for content generation (copywriting, scripts, etc.).
6. Experience with B2B / SaaS / CRM businesses, either on the algorithm or infrastructure side.
7. Experience with international / multilingual / multi‑region products.

Job Information

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $232560 - $427500 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.

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.
3. Exercising sound judgment.

Reasonable Accommodation

ByteDance 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/RA-request