Senior Software Engineering Lead, Trust & Safety - USDS
TikTok
Office
New York, New York, United States
Full Time
About the team
We are looking for a Senior Engineering Lead to join our embedded Trust and Safety team. This position is dedicated to deep technical leadership, guiding the direction and strategy for our proactive risk detection initiatives. You'll join a team with data and full-stack engineers to build high-leverage tools that enhance our Risk and Detection programs, focusing on high-harm, high-risk issues where traditional training data may fall short. You'll provide significant input and guidance on technical direction, architecture, and project selection, playing a pivotal role in identifying and exploring innovative solutions, especially those leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), to evolve our current bespoke detection systems towards more predictive, subject-agnostic models.
As a Senior Engineering Lead, you'll be instrumental in elevating engineering excellence by championing best practices and defining operational standards. You'll guide the team in prioritizing and executing initiatives, translating creative ideas into aligned, high-impact solutions that directly support broader business goals. A key part of your role will be fostering cross-functional alignment, engaging proactively with Product, Operations, and other engineering leaders to ensure our work is seamlessly integrated and in lockstep with company-wide objectives.
This role performs a critical function that supports our efforts to address objectionable or disturbing content. Content that this role interacts with includes images, video, and text related to every-day life, but it can also include (but is not limited to) bullying; hate speech; child abuse; sexual assault; torture; bestiality; self-harm; suicide; and murder.
It is possible that this role will be exposed to harmful content on a daily basis.
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
- Mentor and guide data and engineering team on technical growth and career development, providing regular feedback.
- Align team efforts with business priorities and enforce execution discipline to ensure high impact.
- Partner with cross-functional teams to define, prioritize, and deliver high-impact engineering solutions.
- Provide technical vision for the team, effectively framing complex problems, defining project scope, and ensuring tight feedback loops with users.
- Raise technical quality standards across the team, particularly for React-based frontends and scalable backend patterns (Python, Golang).
- Clarify ambiguous challenges, drive accountability for results, and champion impact over mere output.
- Ensure team well-being and psychological safety when navigating exposure to sensitive or disturbing content, balancing velocity with care.
We are looking for a Senior Engineering Lead to join our embedded Trust and Safety team. This position is dedicated to deep technical leadership, guiding the direction and strategy for our proactive risk detection initiatives. You'll join a team with data and full-stack engineers to build high-leverage tools that enhance our Risk and Detection programs, focusing on high-harm, high-risk issues where traditional training data may fall short. You'll provide significant input and guidance on technical direction, architecture, and project selection, playing a pivotal role in identifying and exploring innovative solutions, especially those leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), to evolve our current bespoke detection systems towards more predictive, subject-agnostic models.
As a Senior Engineering Lead, you'll be instrumental in elevating engineering excellence by championing best practices and defining operational standards. You'll guide the team in prioritizing and executing initiatives, translating creative ideas into aligned, high-impact solutions that directly support broader business goals. A key part of your role will be fostering cross-functional alignment, engaging proactively with Product, Operations, and other engineering leaders to ensure our work is seamlessly integrated and in lockstep with company-wide objectives.
This role performs a critical function that supports our efforts to address objectionable or disturbing content. Content that this role interacts with includes images, video, and text related to every-day life, but it can also include (but is not limited to) bullying; hate speech; child abuse; sexual assault; torture; bestiality; self-harm; suicide; and murder.
It is possible that this role will be exposed to harmful content on a daily basis.
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
- Mentor and guide data and engineering team on technical growth and career development, providing regular feedback.
- Align team efforts with business priorities and enforce execution discipline to ensure high impact.
- Partner with cross-functional teams to define, prioritize, and deliver high-impact engineering solutions.
- Provide technical vision for the team, effectively framing complex problems, defining project scope, and ensuring tight feedback loops with users.
- Raise technical quality standards across the team, particularly for React-based frontends and scalable backend patterns (Python, Golang).
- Clarify ambiguous challenges, drive accountability for results, and champion impact over mere output.
- Ensure team well-being and psychological safety when navigating exposure to sensitive or disturbing content, balancing velocity with care.
Senior Software Engineering Lead, Trust & Safety - USDS
Office
New York, New York, United States
Full Time
August 11, 2025