Senior Software Engineer (Backend) - TikTok Open Platform

Responsibilities

The TikTok Open Platform team builds the foundational platform capabilities and infrastructure connecting TikTok's massive ecosystem with developers, enterprise merchants, and third-party partners. We focus on high-concurrency architecture, API gateways, tenant isolation, security/compliance, and next-generation AI-enabled platform services. Responsibilities - System Architecture & Evolution: Responsible for the architecture design, development, and evolution of B2B server-side services for TikTok Open Platform, creating standardized, reusable platform capabilities for developers and ecosystem partners. - Domain Modeling & Storage Architecture: Design core domain models and storage layers. Formulate data partition strategies, read/write pipelines, hot/cold data tiering, capacity planning, and performance optimization according to business growth. - Ecosystem Openness & Security Control: Build open capability frameworks including API gateways, authentication, RBAC/ABAC permissions, multi-tenant isolation, quota/rate limiting, audit logging, and risk controls to ensure platform security and compliance. - Distributed Systems Reliability: Design and deploy high-availability, scalable distributed systems. Implement crucial mechanisms for consistency, idempotency, fault tolerance, circuit breaking, degradation, async processing, and disaster recovery. - AI-Assisted Engineering Practice: Leverage AI programming tools and Agent capabilities (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code) to scale up engineering efficiency across requirement analysis, schema design, coding, testing, Code Review, documentation, and live incident troubleshooting. - AI-Native Platform Capabilities: Participate in building open capabilities for AI-native scenarios, including Agent-friendly API design/semantic descriptions, MCP/Tool integration, context/knowledge feed pipelines, AI traffic auditing, and token cost governance. - Technical Governance: Lead complex online issue diagnosis, continuously improve system observability and fault recovery efficiency, and take ownership of core SLA and long-term tech debt.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications - Experience & Level: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related fields, with 5+ years of server-side software engineering experience. Background in B2B systems, open platforms, or large-scale developer platforms preferred. (Targeting Senior/L3 level). - Language & Core Tech: Solid mastery of Golang, Java, or Python, with a deep understanding of concurrent programming, network models, and runtime mechanisms. - Data & Storage Expertise: In-depth knowledge of relational databases, NoSQL, caches, and search engines. Practical experience in indexing design, sharding, database migration, capacity assessment, and performance tuning. - Distributed Systems: Strong understanding of distributed system fundamentals, including consensus, availability, idempotency, retry mechanisms, message reliability, rate limiting, and circuit breaking. - AI Tooling & Practical Knowledge: Experience incorporating AI coding tools (Cursor, Claude Code, etc.) into daily development workflows. Understanding of LLM concepts, RAG, Function Calling, Agents, and MCP boundaries to judge appropriate AI integration scenarios. - Execution & Ownership: Excellent problem-solving, communication, and cross-team project driving capabilities. Preferred Qualifications - Experience with Open APIs, OAuth, API Gateways, billing/quota systems, or developer ecosystem infrastructure. - Hands-on experience in large-scale data governance, multi-region/multi-active deployment, or high-concurrency core backend pipelines. - Experience building LLM applications, Agent engineering, MCP Servers, or AI Gateways (model routing, token/cost metering, content safety).

Job Information

[For Pay Transparency]Compensation Description (Annually)

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $218400 - $387600 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.

About TikTok

TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. At TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. TikTok's global headquarters are in Los Angeles and Singapore, and we also have offices in New York City, London, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo.

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.

TikTok Accommodation

TikTok 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