Software Engineer, C/C++ SDK Performance Optimization
Jul 22, 2026 San Jose
About us
TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video and our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy.
- Size: 5,001 - 10,000 employees
- Industry: Entertainment & Gaming
Responsibilities
About this team
We own the Effect SDK powering TikTok's camera and creation experience - the system behind every filter, AR effect, and visual effect used by hundreds of millions of creators every day. This role sits at the business architecture layer of a self-developed rendering engine, partnering closely with rendering, algorithm, and camera pipeline teams to deliver smooth, low-power effect experiences across a massive range of mobile devices.
Responsibilities
- Drive end-to-end experience optimization of the effect pipeline during shooting - diagnose and resolve frame drops, jank, thermal throttling, and power consumption issues on real user devices.
- Profile the full camera→effect→render→encode pipeline; identify bottlenecks across CPU, GPU, memory, and thread scheduling, and land measurable improvements.
- Collaborate with the rendering engine team to understand and leverage low-level capabilities, and with the on-device algorithm team to co-optimize model integration and execution.
- Build and evolve the business architecture of the Effect SDK (Native, cross-platform for iOS & Android), turning product requirements into robust, maintainable modules.
- Localize and fix technical problems and bugs reported from production, with a strong ownership mindset.
- Learn new techniques quickly, communicate clearly, and collaborate well across teams.
Qualifications
Minimum Qualifications
- B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science with 1+ years of relevant experience.
- Proficient in C/C++
- Strong interest in performance on mobile devices - you enjoy digging into profilers and chasing down the last millisecond.
- Familiar with iOS and/or Android development, and has experience in video and image processing related applications on mobile phones
Preferred Qualifications
- Hands-on experience with mobile profiling tools (Xcode Instruments, Perfetto / Systrace, Android GPU Inspector, RenderDoc, etc.).
- Experience optimizing frame rate stability, memory footprint, thermal, or battery consumption in a consumer-scale mobile app.
- Familiarity with camera pipelines (AVFoundation / Camera2 / CameraX) or real-time video processing.
- Experience with AR, game engine, or real-time graphics development.
- Experience integrating on-device inference frameworks (CoreML, TNN, MNN, NCNN, TFLite) and optimizing their runtime cost.
- Basic understanding of graphics rendering APIs (OpenGL ES / Metal / Vulkan); shader programming experience is a plus
Job Information
[For Pay Transparency] Compensation Description (annually)
The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $162000 - $316800 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 this team
We own the Effect SDK powering TikTok's camera and creation experience - the system behind every filter, AR effect, and visual effect used by hundreds of millions of creators every day. This role sits at the business architecture layer of a self-developed rendering engine, partnering closely with rendering, algorithm, and camera pipeline teams to deliver smooth, low-power effect experiences across a massive range of mobile devices.
Responsibilities
- Drive end-to-end experience optimization of the effect pipeline during shooting - diagnose and resolve frame drops, jank, thermal throttling, and power consumption issues on real user devices.
- Profile the full camera→effect→render→encode pipeline; identify bottlenecks across CPU, GPU, memory, and thread scheduling, and land measurable improvements.
- Collaborate with the rendering engine team to understand and leverage low-level capabilities, and with the on-device algorithm team to co-optimize model integration and execution.
- Build and evolve the business architecture of the Effect SDK (Native, cross-platform for iOS & Android), turning product requirements into robust, maintainable modules.
- Localize and fix technical problems and bugs reported from production, with a strong ownership mindset.
- Learn new techniques quickly, communicate clearly, and collaborate well across teams.
Minimum Qualifications
- B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science with 1+ years of relevant experience.
- Proficient in C/C++
- Strong interest in performance on mobile devices - you enjoy digging into profilers and chasing down the last millisecond.
- Familiar with iOS and/or Android development, and has experience in video and image processing related applications on mobile phones
Preferred Qualifications
- Hands-on experience with mobile profiling tools (Xcode Instruments, Perfetto / Systrace, Android GPU Inspector, RenderDoc, etc.).
- Experience optimizing frame rate stability, memory footprint, thermal, or battery consumption in a consumer-scale mobile app.
- Familiarity with camera pipelines (AVFoundation / Camera2 / CameraX) or real-time video processing.
- Experience with AR, game engine, or real-time graphics development.
- Experience integrating on-device inference frameworks (CoreML, TNN, MNN, NCNN, TFLite) and optimizing their runtime cost.
- Basic understanding of graphics rendering APIs (OpenGL ES / Metal / Vulkan); shader programming experience is a plus
About this team
We own the Effect SDK powering TikTok's camera and creation experience - the system behind every filter, AR effect, and visual effect used by hundreds of millions of creators every day. This role sits at the business architecture layer of a self-developed rendering engine, partnering closely with rendering, algorithm, and camera pipeline teams to deliver smooth, low-power effect experiences across a massive range of mobile devices.
Responsibilities
- Drive end-to-end experience optimization of the effect pipeline during shooting - diagnose and resolve frame drops, jank, thermal throttling, and power consumption issues on real user devices.
- Profile the full camera→effect→render→encode pipeline; identify bottlenecks across CPU, GPU, memory, and thread scheduling, and land measurable improvements.
- Collaborate with the rendering engine team to understand and leverage low-level capabilities, and with the on-device algorithm team to co-optimize model integration and execution.
- Build and evolve the business architecture of the Effect SDK (Native, cross-platform for iOS & Android), turning product requirements into robust, maintainable modules.
- Localize and fix technical problems and bugs reported from production, with a strong ownership mindset.
- Learn new techniques quickly, communicate clearly, and collaborate well across teams.
Qualifications
Minimum Qualifications
- B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science with 1+ years of relevant experience.
- Proficient in C/C++
- Strong interest in performance on mobile devices - you enjoy digging into profilers and chasing down the last millisecond.
- Familiar with iOS and/or Android development, and has experience in video and image processing related applications on mobile phones
Preferred Qualifications
- Hands-on experience with mobile profiling tools (Xcode Instruments, Perfetto / Systrace, Android GPU Inspector, RenderDoc, etc.).
- Experience optimizing frame rate stability, memory footprint, thermal, or battery consumption in a consumer-scale mobile app.
- Familiarity with camera pipelines (AVFoundation / Camera2 / CameraX) or real-time video processing.
- Experience with AR, game engine, or real-time graphics development.
- Experience integrating on-device inference frameworks (CoreML, TNN, MNN, NCNN, TFLite) and optimizing their runtime cost.
- Basic understanding of graphics rendering APIs (OpenGL ES / Metal / Vulkan); shader programming experience is a plus
Job Information
[For Pay Transparency] Compensation Description (annually)
The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $162000 - $316800 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
ResponsibilitiesAbout this team
We own the Effect SDK powering TikTok's camera and creation experience - the system behind every filter, AR effect, and visual effect used by hundreds of millions of creators every day. This role sits at the business architecture layer of a self-developed rendering engine, partnering closely with rendering, algorithm, and camera pipeline teams to deliver smooth, low-power effect experiences across a massive range of mobile devices.
Responsibilities
- Drive end-to-end experience optimization of the effect pipeline during shooting - diagnose and resolve frame drops, jank, thermal throttling, and power consumption issues on real user devices.
- Profile the full camera→effect→render→encode pipeline; identify bottlenecks across CPU, GPU, memory, and thread scheduling, and land measurable improvements.
- Collaborate with the rendering engine team to understand and leverage low-level capabilities, and with the on-device algorithm team to co-optimize model integration and execution.
- Build and evolve the business architecture of the Effect SDK (Native, cross-platform for iOS & Android), turning product requirements into robust, maintainable modules.
- Localize and fix technical problems and bugs reported from production, with a strong ownership mindset.
- Learn new techniques quickly, communicate clearly, and collaborate well across teams.
Qualifications
QualificationsMinimum Qualifications
- B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science with 1+ years of relevant experience.
- Proficient in C/C++
- Strong interest in performance on mobile devices - you enjoy digging into profilers and chasing down the last millisecond.
- Familiar with iOS and/or Android development, and has experience in video and image processing related applications on mobile phones
Preferred Qualifications
- Hands-on experience with mobile profiling tools (Xcode Instruments, Perfetto / Systrace, Android GPU Inspector, RenderDoc, etc.).
- Experience optimizing frame rate stability, memory footprint, thermal, or battery consumption in a consumer-scale mobile app.
- Familiarity with camera pipelines (AVFoundation / Camera2 / CameraX) or real-time video processing.
- Experience with AR, game engine, or real-time graphics development.
- Experience integrating on-device inference frameworks (CoreML, TNN, MNN, NCNN, TFLite) and optimizing their runtime cost.
- Basic understanding of graphics rendering APIs (OpenGL ES / Metal / Vulkan); shader programming experience is a plus
Additional Information
- Salary: $162,000 – $316,800
- Posted: Jul 22, 2026