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:
Expertise in 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

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
- Partner with subject matter experts and analysts to develop methodologies for reviewing large volumes of potentially violative content; action content at scale based on high confidence reviews and analysis
- Support research content analysis through accurate labeling and annotating content--including written text, spoken language, images, audio, videos, and accounts--in order to create accurate classifiers for increased precision of models and improved recall rates for problematic content

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

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

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

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

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.

Job Information

[For Pay Transparency] Compensation Description (annually)

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $68640 - $97777 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.