Machine Learning Engineer, AI Safety & Assurance - USDS

Responsibilities

About the Team You will join the TikTok USDS JV - Data Governance and Assurance Engineering team, the architects of the foundational infrastructure managing the end-to-end AI lifecycle. Our mission is to ensure the integrity, security, and compliance of our AI assets through automated frameworks and advanced content assurance standards. Our team operates at the high-stakes intersection of TikTok's State-of-the-Art (SOTA) Recommendation Systems, Adversarial ML, and AI Governance. We are building the "safety operating system" for TikTok's US data, replacing manual oversight with scalable, automated code that enforces safety and alignment across one of the world's most sophisticated algorithmic ecosystems. About the Role As an Machine Learning Engineer - AI Safety, you will be responsible for the technical "guardrails" and integrity of TikTok's recommendation and General Purpose AI (GPAI) systems. You will build the high-performance engines that audit, evaluate, and mitigate risks in real-time. Core Focus Areas: - Recommendation & GPAI Assurance: Architecting auditable recommendation pipelines to ensure content delivery systems meet strict USDS compliance and safety requirements. - Algorithmic Interpretability: Enhancing the transparency of recommendation signals to ensure model decisions are explainable and aligned with safety protocols. - Continuous Monitoring & Mitigation: Developing automated pipelines to evaluate, monitor, and fine-tune GPAI/LLM deployments to proactively mitigate risks such as bias, toxicity, and misinformation. Responsibilities - Automated Safety Evaluation: Design and scale high-throughput evaluation engines to benchmark LLM and Recommendation Model outputs against safety, bias, and accuracy protocols. - Adversarial Robustness: Build and maintain continuous monitoring frameworks to proactively identify vulnerabilities in recommendation logic and model behavior. - Governance-as-Code: Architect metadata frameworks and control planes for ML pipelines, ensuring training data and model weights adhere to purpose-limitation and safety constraints. - Real-time Mitigation: Develop low-latency safety filters and "circuit breakers" that can intervene in real-time recommendation streams (ms-level latency) without compromising system performance. - Observability & Lineage: Create centralized platforms that provide real-time observability into model decisions, ensuring every algorithmic "promotion" is traceable, auditable, and compliant.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications: - Education: Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related technical field. - Software Engineering: 2+ years of experience in production-level software development (Go, Python, or C++). - Systems at Scale: Proven experience with Distributed Systems and handling high-volume ML data pipelines (e.g., Spark, Flink, or Kafka). - ML Foundations: Strong grasp of Data Structures, Algorithms, and Machine Learning fundamentals (Deep Learning, Optimization, Evaluation Metrics). Preferred Qualifications: - AI Safety Expertise: Direct experience in AI Alignment, Model Interpretability (XAI), or Adversarial Machine Learning. - LLM Specialization: Familiarity with LLM evaluation frameworks (e.g., G-Eval, RAGAS), safety fine-tuning (RLHF/DPO), or prompt-injection defense. - RecSys Knowledge: Deep understanding of modern content recommendation systems (e.g., Two-tower models, Deep Ranking, Reinforcement Learning). - Full-Stack ML Tech: Proficiency in Go (Golang) for high-performance backend infrastructure and Python/PyTorch for ML modeling and research. - Regulatory Translation: A proven ability to translate complex legal and safety policies into rigorous, scalable technical implementations.

Job Information

[For Pay Transparency]Compensation Description (Annually)

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $136800 - $359720 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 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