Validations Specialist, Trust & Safety - USDS

It is possible that this role will be exposed to harmful content on a daily basis.

This team must be comfortable occasionally working unusual business hours (e.g., Tuesday-Saturday or Sunday-Thursday), working late night shifts, and also providing shift coverage during crisis events.

In order to enhance collaboration and cross-functional partnerships, among other things, at this time, our organization follows a hybrid work schedule that requires employees to work in the office 3 days a week, or as directed by their manager/department. We regularly review our hybrid work model, and the specific requirements may change at any time.

Responsibilities:
Support Proactive Risk Detection
- Develop and refine harm detection signals: Translate data insights into measurable signals to enhance automated detection and guide manual review.
- Analyze complex datasets: Use various tools to query and analyze large volumes of data (e.g., user reports, content metadata, engagement metrics) to uncover hidden signals.
- Operationalize new insights cross-functionally: Collaborate with data scientists, engineers, policy, and operations to integrate new detection signals, supporting effective and scalable threat mitigation.

Investigate Intelligence Collection Requests
- Review, investigate, and process sensitive intelligence leads with high quality, accuracy, and speed
- Conduct deep-dive investigations leveraging subject matter expertise, policy, tooling, and data to thoroughly assess and validate potential and emerging threats on platform
- Leverage internal tools and queries to conduct "sweeps" designed to identify remove violative content at scale
- Provide summaries/reports documenting results of deep dive investigations

Data-driven decision making
- Utilize data plus internal tools and systems to help Trust & Safety teams analyze trends, identify patterns, and share insights that support process improvements
- Share data and insights that illuminate policy gaps and grey areas, all with the intention of improving policy to enable clear, scalable enforcement
- Test new tools and analysts' hypotheses, and provide precise feedback and recommendations based on data

Expertise in interpreting TikTok Policy
- Interpret TikTok's Community Guidelines and make enforcement decisions based on them
- Stay current on key workflow changes and policy updates that are regularly cascaded
- Leverage unique vantage point to help bridge gaps between Policy, Moderation, and Trust & Safety teams in order to improve policy and process

Detection Engineering Support
- Partner with Trust & Safety analysts to test and improve threat detection models
- Identify intelligence (signals) that improve analyst-built detections
- Support hypothesis testing through validating detections in the development phase

Project Management
- Ensure that action items identified as the result of root cause analyses are escalated to the appropriate cross-functional partners for remediation
- Trouble-shoot internal tooling and programs; support testing and iteration of new tool launches
- Manage and coordinate requests from cross-functional partners; ensure requests are completed in a timely manner
- Support Quality Assurance initiatives to assess the team's enforcement decisions

Content & Account Reviews
- Conduct meticulous review of large volumes of potentially high harm content and accounts, and make enforcement decisions based on Community Guidelines
- Based on large scale reviews, identify and capture new intelligence signals to improve overall detection capabilities; drive real-time insights to leadership and cross-functional partners across Incident Management, Policy, Investigations, Comms, Legal, and other teams

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree or at least 1 year of experience in Trust & Safety, Operations, Content Moderation, or as a research assistant
- Strategic critical thinker with analytical and creative problem-solving skills
- Demonstrated experience as a collaborative team player; you understand the importance of proactive problem identification and covering for your colleagues when they need you most
- Strong communication and writing skills
- Ability to work independently and reliably under tight timeframes in a fast-paced environment
- Strong ability to multi-task and manage multiple competing priorities while working seamlessly across teams
- Open minded thinking about people, cultures, backgrounds, and threats

Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in online investigations, analysis, escalations, or operations, content policy, project management, or equivalent relevant fields, such as content moderation or model labeling
- Ability to thrive in fast-paced, ambiguous environments, prioritize work, and make data-driven decisions
- Technical aptitude for learning complex tools or systems required for daily operations
- Experience dealing with complex, no-right-answer problems; demonstrated critical thinking skills and interest in ethics and/or policy
- Highly organized with experience prioritizing multiple functions and tasks while managing their work time efficiently without compromising quality
- Analytical-thinking and problem-solving experience
- Knowledge of social media challenges and sensitivity to safety, regulatory, or compliance issues
- Experience driving high-priority issues through process of resolution
- Your ability to work in a high tempo environment, adapt, respond to day-to-day challenges of the role.
- Your resilience and commitment to self-care to manage the emotional demands of the role.