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.
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- 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.
Perks and Benefits
Health and Wellness
- Health Insurance
- Dental Insurance
- Vision Insurance
- HSA
- Life Insurance
- Fitness Subsidies
- Short-Term Disability
- Long-Term Disability
- On-Site Gym
- Mental Health Benefits
- Virtual Fitness Classes
Parental Benefits
- Fertility Benefits
- Adoption Assistance Program
- Family Support Resources
Work Flexibility
- Flexible Work Hours
- Hybrid Work Opportunities
Office Life and Perks
- Casual Dress
- Snacks
- Pet-friendly Office
- Happy Hours
- Some Meals Provided
- Company Outings
- On-Site Cafeteria
- Holiday Events
Vacation and Time Off
- Paid Vacation
- Paid Holidays
- Personal/Sick Days
- Leave of Absence
Financial and Retirement
- 401(K) With Company Matching
- Performance Bonus
- Company Equity
Professional Development
- Promote From Within
- Access to Online Courses
- Leadership Training Program
- Associate or Rotational Training Program
- Mentor Program
Diversity and Inclusion
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Program
- Employee Resource Groups (ERG)
Company Videos
Hear directly from employees about what it is like to work at TikTok.