Frontend Engineer, Design Foundation

Frontend Engineer, Design Foundation

Location: San Jose

Employment Type: Regular

Job Code: A200171

Responsibilities

The Design Foundation team powers design excellence across TikTok's monetization products. We achieve this through design systems, creative design, and design technology:

• Design System (Keystone): Scalable libraries, tokens, and tooling that enable hundreds of designers and engineers to deliver high-quality, consistent experiences across 10+ products.
• Creative Design: Campaigns, motion, and visual experiences that elevate brand storytelling, drive user engagement, and generate direct revenue.
• Design Technology: Technology for design systems, creative design, and content design — including plugins, automation, and AI-powered utilities that enhance design efficiency and bridge design-to-code workflows.

As a cross-functional group, we set the foundation for quality, consistency, and efficiency across the entire product ecosystem.

About the Role

We're seeking a Senior Design Technologist to bridge the worlds of design and technology. In this role, you'll spearhead innovative technology solutions that scale our design system, accelerate creative storytelling, and empower content design — ensuring our design org works smarter, faster, and with greater impact.

• Deliver high-quality design technology solutions across design systems, creative design, and content design.
• Define technical best practices for design–engineering collaboration and design technology adoption.
• Build internal tools, Figma plugins, and AI-powered utilities that improve efficiency, consistency, and scalability.
• Mentor and guide designers and engineers in prototyping, AI literacy, and design technology usage.
• Partner cross-functionally to drive adoption of developed technologies and best practices.
• Explore emerging platforms, AI tools, and generative technologies to extend our design foundation.
• Influence roadmap strategy for design system evolution, creative innovation, and content workflows.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• Extensive years of experience in design engineering, creative technology, or front-end development roles.
• Strong skills in React, JavaScript frameworks, prototyping, and integrations/plugins for Figma.
• Experience with AI/ML-adjacent tools: prompt engineering, AI-assisted coding, or generative design workflows.
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional projects and influence senior stakeholders.
• Track record of building or contributing to large-scale design systems, creative tooling, or content workflows.
• Solid understanding of design systems, visual design, content design, accessibility, and internationalization best practices.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Excellent collaboration and communication skills — able to bridge between design, engineering, and product teams.
• Strong portfolio or GitHub showcasing design engineering and prototyping work.
• Background in creative technology for campaigns, motion, or experimental interaction design a plus.

Job Information

For Pay Transparency Compensation Description (Annually) The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $121600 - $288000 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:

• Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;
• Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and
• Exercising sound judgment.

About TikTok

TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. At TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. TikTok's global headquarters are in Los Angeles and Singapore, and we also have offices in New York City, London, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo.

Why Join Us

Inspiring creativity is at the core of TikTok's mission. Our innovative product is built to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect – and our global, diverse teams make that possible. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and bring joy - a mission we work towards every day.

We strive to do great things with great people. We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. Every challenge is an opportunity to learn and innovate as one team. We're resilient and embrace challenges as they come. By constantly iterating and fostering an "Always Day 1" mindset, we achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our company, and our users. When we create and grow together, the possibilities are limitless. Join us.

Diversity & Inclusion

TikTok is committed to creating an inclusive space where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. Our platform connects people from across the globe and so does our workplace. At TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. To achieve that goal, we are committed to celebrating our diverse voices and to creating an environment that reflects the many communities we reach. We are passionate about this and hope you are too.

TikTok Accommodation

TikTok is committed to providing reasonable accommodations in our recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, sincerely held religious beliefs or other reasons protected by applicable laws. If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at