Design Engineer (Founding Engineer) - TikTok

Location: San Jose Employment Type: Regular Job Code: A20076A Responsibilities Reshape the design-to-engineering workflow – Partner with product designers and client engineers to identify friction in the handoff, and close the gap through better processes and shared practices. Explore aggressively – Run multiple feasibility tracks for new workflows and tooling in parallel, rather than picking one and grinding. Close the loop into production – Lead how design-delivered code integrates with the mainline codebase, partnering with engineering to systematize design system components, performance, and accessibility into production-quality implementations that improve user experience. Build AI design tooling – Architect and ship internal AI tooling (agents, design system plugins, code-generation pipelines, prototyping platforms) that lets every designer move from idea to high-fidelity prototype to shippable code with leverage. Drive technical direction across design and product – Partner with engineering leads on architecture, design system evolution, and tooling roadmap. Translate design intent into engineering trade-offs, and vice versa. Qualifications Minimum Qualifications With engineering experience shipping production mobile or full-stack systems. Full-stack capability, with deep expertise in at least one mobile stack (iOS / Swift, SwiftUI or Android / Kotlin, Compose) and working knowledge of backend (APIs, services, data layer). Deep, hands‑on use of AI coding agents (Cursor, Claude Code, etc.) with efficient token budgeting, agentic workflows, and a track record of shipping with them; products you built independently end-to-end strongly preferred. Experience building or shipping AI product features or agent-based workflows. Ability to solve complex problems with simple solutions. Founding or early‑team experience, or clear evidence of having shaped a team or practice from scratch. Strong product thinking, able to drive ambiguous problems all the way to shipped impact. Preferred Qualifications Background spanning both design and engineering (designer‑turned‑engineer, or engineer with formal design training or shipped design work). Public craft signal – open source contributions, conference talks, published tooling, or a notable public presence around your work. Experience with Lynx, or other cross‑platform mobile frameworks. Experience shipping social, creator, or content products at scale. Passion for TikTok and creator communities. Job Information The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $121,600 - $288,000 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; this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units. #J-18808-Ljbffr