Backend Software Engineer, TikTok Live Recommendation Infrastructure

Backend Software Engineer, TikTok Live Recommendation Infrastructure

Location: San Jose

Employment Type: Regular

Job Code: A44447A

Responsibilities

About the Team Live-stream is a new and rapidly growing business that aims to bring joy to end users and allow more influencers to make an impact among their followers. And it's essential to pick the "right" live-stream for the "right" audiences. Our Live-stream Recommendation Infra team is responsible for building up and optimizing the infrastructure for such recommendation systems, so as to provide the most stable and best experience for our users. We work closely with applied machine learning engineers and build scalable systems to support all kinds of innovative algorithms and techniques.

Responsibilities:

• Design and build backend systems that support large-scale recommendation workloads, including training, inference, and data pipelines.
• Develop robust and efficient model infrastructure, including distributed training pipelines and low-latency inference serving.
• Architect and improve data pipelines to enable efficient collection, preprocessing, and offline feature engineering for recommendation and ranking models.
• Collaborate closely with ML engineers and researchers to productionize models and integrate them into the TikTok Live recommendation stack.
• Drive performance optimization and cost-efficiency across training, inference, and data workflows.
• Ensure system robustness, scalability, and maintainability in high-traffic live streaming scenarios.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree or above in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field.
• At least 3 years of experience in strong programming skills in C++, Go, or Java, and scripting experience in Python.
• Solid experience in distributed systems and backend service development.
• Hands-on experience with ML infrastructure, including model serving, inference optimization, or large-scale training systems.
• Proficiency in building and maintaining data pipelines such as Spark, Flink, Kafka, Hadoop, or similar.
• Strong problem-solving skills, with the ability to work in fast-paced, collaborative environments.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience working with recommendation systems, ranking, or personalization platforms.
• Familiarity with deep learning frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch.
• Knowledge of cloud-native environments (Kubernetes, container orchestration).
• Experience in performance optimization for large-scale, low-latency systems.
• Prior experience in live streaming, content delivery, or real-time systems is a plus.

Compensation Description (Annually): The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $244800 - $588000 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.