Senior Backend Software Engineer, TikTok Privacy AI

$194,000 - $355,000/Yr

Tiktok - San Jose, CA

Full-time - Senior

San Jose, CA

Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services

About the position

TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video, with a mission to inspire creativity and bring joy. As part of the TikTok Privacy & Security group, the AI Privacy team is dedicated to providing solutions that preserve user privacy in all AI-powered experiences for billions of users. Privacy is not just about compliance; it is about fostering trust and enabling technological innovation while respecting user choices. The AI domain presents unique challenges, including managing multiple data processing systems, handling petabyte-scale training data pipelines, and ensuring the responsible use of AI algorithms. The team is committed to building privacy-aware infrastructure that supports feature engineering, training data generation, model training, and product usage of AI, allowing engineers to innovate without compromising user privacy. As a Senior Backend Software Engineer, you will work closely with Product Managers to design user-friendly and efficient platform functionalities for data governance. You will be responsible for the system design and functionality development of privacy engineering frameworks and platforms. Your work will involve implementing anonymization, pseudonymization, and encryption technologies to safeguard user privacy during machine learning data processing activities. Collaboration with operations and business teams will be essential to address technical challenges and continuously improve the efficiency and stability of privacy solutions. You will also stay updated on industry advancements in privacy engineering and gather feedback from business lines to enhance the solutions provided.

Responsibilities

• Work closely with PMs to design user-friendly and efficient platform functionalities for data governance.
• Be responsible for the system design and functionality development of the privacy engineering frameworks and platforms.
• Work on anonymization/pseudonymization/encryption technologies to preserve user privacy in all ML data processing activities.
• Collaborate with operations and business teams to address technical challenges when applying solutions throughout the product suite.
• Investigate cutting-edge industry progress in privacy engineering and gather feedback from business lines to continuously improve efficiency and stability of the solutions.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree or above, 5+ years of software engineering experience.
• In-depth understanding of computer principles and general server architecture.
• Skilled in various data structures and algorithms, proficient in a programming language.
• Good understanding of business scenarios and requirements to design reasonable technical solutions.
• Strong communication skills and teamwork spirit.
• Rigorous logical thinking.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience in delivering distributed systems and data infrastructure in a production setting.
• Experience in privacy awareness process design for SDLC and AI model training.
• Experience in data processing control solutions like purpose limitation and access control.
• Experience in data protection solutions like data classification and data de-identification.
• Rich experience in Internet product architecture design.
• Experience with data governance frameworks to register, manage, and control data lifecycle to meet privacy compliance requirements.

Benefits

• 100% premium coverage for employee medical insurance, approximately 75% for dependents.
• Health Savings Account (HSA) with company match.
• Dental, Vision, Short/Long term Disability, Basic Life, Voluntary Life, and AD&D insurance plans.
• Flexible Spending Account (FSA) options for Health Care, Limited Purpose, and Dependent Care.
• 10 paid holidays per year plus 17 days of Paid Personal Time Off (PPTO) and 10 paid sick days per year.
• 12 weeks of paid Parental leave and 8 weeks of paid Supplemental Disability.
• Mental and emotional health benefits through EAP and Lyra.
• 401K company match, gym, and cellphone service reimbursements.