Principal Engineer

Responsibilities

The Arch-Global E-Commerce team develops large-scale recommendation, matching, and ranking algorithms for creator-commerce platforms, supports multiple teams such as Creator Marketplace, Creator Shop, and TikTok consumer experiences. We leverage machine learning and data-driven optimization to connect sellers, creators, and products more effectively, increase content-commerce supply, and accelerate e-commerce GMV growth.

You will own the overall algorithm infrastructure roadmap for Creator Agent. Work in close partnership with the algorithm team to ensure cutting-edge agent capabilities can be delivered to the creator business.

1. Lead the architectural development of core Agent algorithm capabilities, including but not limited to:
   • Agent orchestration framework: Build agent orchestration capabilities supporting complex business logic, based on LangGraph or in-house frameworks.
   • Agentic Search: Build intelligent retrieval architecture tailored to creator scenarios, enabling the Agent to proactively and iteratively gather information from product, creator, and content corpora.
   • Hierarchical memory systems: Design short-term, long-term, and episodic memory mechanisms, providing the algorithm team with foundational capabilities for personalized creator understanding.
   • Algorithm tuning infrastructure: Provide efficient training, evaluation, and iteration infrastructure for Agent RL, Memory RL, SFT, and additional frontier optimization directions (see below).
2. Continuously track and bring frontier Agent optimization directions into the team, including but not limited to:
   • Test-time / inference-time optimization (self-refine, reflection, tree search, process reward model-guided reasoning, etc.)
   • Tool use optimization (tool-use SFT, tool-use trajectory RL, tool selection optimization)
   • Multi-agent collaboration and deliberation
   • Automated prompt / workflow optimization (e.g., DSPy, TextGrad - "gradient-style" optimization of prompts and workflows)
   • Agent distillation into smaller, more efficient models
   • Agent evaluation and reward modeling (LLM-as-Judge, PRMs, Agent benchmark design, etc.)
3. And, based on team and business realities, judge which directions are worth investing in and translate them into team capabilities.
4. Track the latest Agent architectures from OpenAI, Anthropic, and others, and adapt them deeply to our creator business.
5. Partner deeply with the Algorithm team — understands the real needs of algorithm iteration, and ensures that algorithm infrastructure accelerates rather than bottlenecks algorithmic innovation.
6. Develop deep understanding of creators as a B2B user group; translate business insights into algorithm infrastructure decisions.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

1. Deep understanding of the Agent technical stack — familiarity with the architectural approaches of frontier Agent practices such as OpenAI SDK and Claude Code, and a clear point of view on the capability boundaries and algorithmic challenges of Agents.
2. Hands-on experience with LangGraph (or equivalent frameworks) for building production-grade, domain-customised agents.
3. Systematic understanding of Agent optimisation — familiarity with the foundational directions (Agent RL, hierarchical memory and Memory RL, SFT), plus hands-on practice or deep familiarity with at least 2-3 frontier directions (e.g., test-time optimisation, tool-use optimisation, multi-agent collaboration, automated prompt/workflow optimisation, Agent distillation, Agent evaluation).
4. Familiarity with Agentic Search design and implementation, with a clear understanding of the paradigm shift from traditional retrieval to agent-driven retrieval.
5. Deep understanding of B2B / ToB businesses — able to reason about algorithm infrastructure from B2B-specific angles (user workflows, ROI, explainability, controllability) rather than directly applying consumer-product intuitions.
6. Technical judgement and forward-looking perspective — able to identify directions with real business value in a rapidly evolving Agent landscape, and bring fresh thinking to the team.
7. Outstanding cross-team collaboration skills — able to build a deep partnership with the product, algorithm and other cooperation engineer teams and drive complex algorithm projects to high-quality delivery.

Preferred Qualifications

1. End-to-end experience building LLM-powered (especially Agent) algorithm infrastructure from 0 to 1.
2. Deep hands-on experience with RL / RLHF / DPO / GRPO and other LLM alignment techniques.
3. Hands-on exploration or published work in test-time scaling, process reward models, or Agent self-improvement.
4. Practical experience with automated prompt / workflow optimisation (DSPy, TextGrad, etc.).
5. Experience with algorithm infrastructure for content generation (copywriting, scripts, etc.).
6. Experience with B2B / SaaS / CRM businesses, either on the algorithm or infrastructure side.
7. Experience with international / multilingual / multi-region products.

About Us

Founded in 2012, ByteDance's mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. With a suite of more than a dozen products, including TikTok, Lemon8, CapCut and Pico as well as platforms specific to the China market, including Toutiao, Douyin, and Xigua, ByteDance has made it easier and more fun for people to connect with, consume, and create content.

Why Join ByteDance

Inspiring creativity is at the core of ByteDance's mission. Our innovative products are 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 enrich life - a mission we work towards every day.

As ByteDancers, 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. 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

ByteDance 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 ByteDance, our mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. 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.

Reasonable Accommodation

ByteDance 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

Job Information

【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Annually)

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $241680 - $456000 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:

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

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:

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