Policy Manager, Search - Trust and Safety

Responsibilities

As a Policy Manager, Search Policy in our Trust & Safety team, you will have the opportunity to work with teams of product managers, data scientists, user researchers, operations, legal and various relevant stakeholders to craft policies and safety strategies for Search and Search product features.

This person will play a critical role in shaping TikTok's safety and editorial policies for a rapidly growing suite of TikTok Search products, ensuring they are defensible, clear, and consistently applied. You will be responsible for risk assessment, development of policies, and transparency requirements for new and emerging Search features. You will partner closely with product, enforcement, legal, and business teams, and provide thought leadership on complex and cross-cutting issues. This role is highly strategic and hands-on, requiring the ability to manage both immediate priorities and long-term frameworks.

Responsibilities:
- Identify and anticipate product and content safety risks to support new launches of Search policies, products and features, leveraging solutions to effectively address the risks by optimizing policy iteration & implementation procedures to let our users engage with a safe content ecosystem.
- Support the safe and responsible development and go-to-market of Search features help with search and discovery on TikTok, by conducting pre-launch impact assessments to identify and mitigate potential real-world product harms.
- Author and maintain policies governing search indexing, ranking, and AI features (e.g., AI Overviews, Snippets).
- Work closely with cross-functional partners and internal experts to understand emerging trends or risks and partner with PMs and ML engineers to code policy rules directly into ranking algorithms and automated moderation models.
- Proactively address policy gaps driven by Generative AI, LLMs, and evolving user query behaviors.
- Design benchmarks and evaluation suites to measure policy enforcement accuracy, false positives, and algorithmic bias.
- Act as the final policy authority for high-stakes, real-time search escalations during breaking news and global crises.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualification(s):
- 5+ years of experience in product policy, trust and safety, legal tech, regulatory compliance, or content moderation strategy within a technology company.
- Demonstrated ability to navigate the tech product development lifecycle, interpret Product Requirement Documents (PRDs), and translate complex policy concepts into user-centric product requirements and roadmap deliverables.
- Experience drafting or enforcing policies specifically targeting Large Language Models (LLMs), retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), or multimodal search systems.
- Proven track record of evaluating complex, highly ambiguous trade-offs between free expression, user safety, and product quality.
- Demonstrated ability to lead complex, cross-functional technical initiatives without formal authority over team members.
- Exceptional communication skills, with extensive experience drafting formal policy documents and presenting to executives.
- Ability to independently analyze enforcement data and policy impact metrics.

Preferred Qualification(s):
- Deep understanding of search engine architecture, information retrieval systems, content ranking principles, or generative AI models.
- Familiarity with global internet governance frameworks, freedom of speech laws, and international human rights standards.

Job Information

[For Pay Transparency] Compensation Description (annually)

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $121600 - $272000 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.

Responsibilities

Responsibilities

As a Policy Manager, Search Policy in our Trust & Safety team, you will have the opportunity to work with teams of product managers, data scientists, user researchers, operations, legal and various relevant stakeholders to craft policies and safety strategies for Search and Search product features.

This person will play a critical role in shaping TikTok's safety and editorial policies for a rapidly growing suite of TikTok Search products, ensuring they are defensible, clear, and consistently applied. You will be responsible for risk assessment, development of policies, and transparency requirements for new and emerging Search features. You will partner closely with product, enforcement, legal, and business teams, and provide thought leadership on complex and cross-cutting issues. This role is highly strategic and hands-on, requiring the ability to manage both immediate priorities and long-term frameworks.

Responsibilities:
- Identify and anticipate product and content safety risks to support new launches of Search policies, products and features, leveraging solutions to effectively address the risks by optimizing policy iteration & implementation procedures to let our users engage with a safe content ecosystem.
- Support the safe and responsible development and go-to-market of Search features help with search and discovery on TikTok, by conducting pre-launch impact assessments to identify and mitigate potential real-world product harms.
- Author and maintain policies governing search indexing, ranking, and AI features (e.g., AI Overviews, Snippets).
- Work closely with cross-functional partners and internal experts to understand emerging trends or risks and partner with PMs and ML engineers to code policy rules directly into ranking algorithms and automated moderation models.
- Proactively address policy gaps driven by Generative AI, LLMs, and evolving user query behaviors.
- Design benchmarks and evaluation suites to measure policy enforcement accuracy, false positives, and algorithmic bias.
- Act as the final policy authority for high-stakes, real-time search escalations during breaking news and global crises.

Qualifications

Qualifications

Minimum Qualification(s):
- 5+ years of experience in product policy, trust and safety, legal tech, regulatory compliance, or content moderation strategy within a technology company.
- Demonstrated ability to navigate the tech product development lifecycle, interpret Product Requirement Documents (PRDs), and translate complex policy concepts into user-centric product requirements and roadmap deliverables.
- Experience drafting or enforcing policies specifically targeting Large Language Models (LLMs), retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), or multimodal search systems.
- Proven track record of evaluating complex, highly ambiguous trade-offs between free expression, user safety, and product quality.
- Demonstrated ability to lead complex, cross-functional technical initiatives without formal authority over team members.
- Exceptional communication skills, with extensive experience drafting formal policy documents and presenting to executives.
- Ability to independently analyze enforcement data and policy impact metrics.

Preferred Qualification(s):
- Deep understanding of search engine architecture, information retrieval systems, content ranking principles, or generative AI models.
- Familiarity with global internet governance frameworks, freedom of speech laws, and international human rights standards.