Rapid Response Lead - USDS

This position entails a Monday through Friday work week. The role also requires participation in a 24/7 on-call rotation, including holiday support.

Responsibilities
Team Leadership & People Management
- Lead, mentor, and develop a team of Rapid Response specialists, fostering a culture of resilience, high performance, and continuous learning.
- Set clear KPIs and objectives; conduct regular 1:1s and performance reviews to ensure the team meets operational benchmarks.
- Actively manage the psychological safety and resilience of the team, given their frequent exposure to sensitive and graphic content.

Program Strategy & Execution
- Drive the formal establishment and scaling of the USDS Rapid Response Program, overseeing the creation of training curricula, SOPs, and escalation workflows.
- Act as the primary point of escalation for cross-functional leaders (Legal, Public Policy, Child Safety, and Engineering) to ensure seamless risk containment.
- Serve as the "Incident Commander" during high-stakes viral crises or breaking-news events, directing team resources and making final high-pressure enforcement decisions.
- Lead comprehensive root-cause analyses following major incidents, presenting findings to executive leadership to prevent recurrence.

Operational Excellence & Tooling
- Oversee the accuracy of content/account enforcement decisions made by the team, ensuring strict adherence to USDS data-sharing and privacy protocols.
- Partner with Product and Engineering teams to advocate for tooling enhancements that reduce response latency and improve detection capabilities.
- Review team-generated analytics to identify macro-trends in platform abuse, using these insights to influence global policy shifts and proactive safety sweeps.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience.
- 5+ years of professional experience in Incident Management, Trust & Safety, Investigations, or Crisis Management, with at least 1-2 years in a leadership or people management role.
- Proven track record of managing high-priority escalations in a fast-paced environment (e.g., social media, government, or tech).
- Exceptional ability to translate complex technical risks into concise briefings for executive leadership.
- Strong experience dealing with sensitive/graphic content and a proven toolkit for managing team burnout and vicarious trauma.

Preferred Qualifications
- Deep knowledge of Child Safety, Violent Extremism, or Human Exploitation policy frameworks.
- Ability to navigate complex data environments and internal proprietary tools to audit team performance and platform health.
- Experience managing distributed teams
- Familiarity with US user privacy regulations and the specific data-handling requirements inherent to USDS operations.

Job Information

[For Pay Transparency] Compensation Description (annually)

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $117334 - $217023 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.

Client-provided location(s): San Jose, CA

Job ID: TikTok-7611234826264365365

Employment Type: OTHER

Posted: 2026-02-27T19:47:15