TikTok Live: Join the Livestream Team!

TikTok Live is the place for the TikTok community to experience culture together – live! TikTok Live enables users to send gifts, interact with content creators, and to find an unfiltered variety in real-time. We spoke with Omer, Bo, and Xiaomu on the Live team to learn about their work and why it's so exciting to join the team that makes TikTok Live an exceptional experience for users.

What do you do at TikTok?

Omer: I am a Tech Lead Manager at TikTok, leading the Live Wallet Team. I joined TikTok in November of 2022.

Bo: Currently, I am in charge of the user progression systems of the TikTok Live revenue team. Prior to joining TikTok in May of 2022, I worked most of my career as a game designer.

Xiaomu: I've been at TikTok since April of 2018, when I joined as a lead on the TikTok Android engineering team. Since the summer of 2021, I've led the TikTok Live Revenue Engineering team.

What's your favorite part about working here?

Omer: I really enjoy the impact we have on our users. The features we work on, the bugs we fix, the issues we troubleshoot; they all ultimately improve the experience of more than a billion users. I also love the intellectual rigor at TikTok. "Seek Truth and Be Pragmatic" is one of the company's core values that strongly resonates with me. I truly see this value being applied in day-to-day work. We focus on learning from failures, and diving deep into root causes to make significant changes.

Bo: My role connects me to people from different regions of the world. As I work, I get to meet people from many different cultures and backgrounds.

Xiaomu: TikTok has grown very fast over the past few years. Due to the current scale of the platform, our engineering team faces unique challenges. Solving those challenges empowers our growth as individuals alongside the products. The most exciting thing is that there is always a new challenge to solve.

Describe the TikTok Live team. How would you describe your ways of working?

Omer: The TikTok Live Team has several components, each focused on a specific aspect of the user's journey. The Fundamental Business team manages the core experiences of a creator going live, such as functionality on iOS and Android. The Revenue team handles all systems related to gifting, rendering animations, and rankings, all very important parts of the Live experience. The Wallet Team manages creators' ability to withdraw their earnings, using a number of payout channels.

Bo: We are very decisive in our goals. I work to offer the users better payment experiences, making sure they feel respected and satisfied. My work also serves to build a stronger relationship between the platform and creators.

Xiaomu: TikTok Live creates value for both TikTok users and creators. Real-time and interactive TikTok Live content provides a unique experience for users, while creators have a direct means of interaction with followers, a more powerful monetization tool, or even a new way of working. Our team is comprised of highly skilled software developers, architects, and other technology professionals who are passionate about creating unique and engaging experiences for users. We place a strong emphasis on collaboration, innovation, and a fast-paced work environment.

What projects does your team work on? How do they impact the business?

Omer: The Wallet system serves as both a user-facing product as well as a payment platform for other business lines. This makes technical design quite interesting!
One of my favorite projects is the Wallet Account system, which maintains user account balance and supports transactions between accounts. As a distributed systems nerd, I find this extremely interesting as we require very strong consistency semantics!

Bo: Revenue systems focus on building value-measuring tools in the LIVE world and guiding the users' actions. We will offer the users goals and positive feedback to increase their interest and loyalty to LIVE. In the short term, we offer progressive systems to reward and guide the user activities in the LIVE world, while in the long term we help them become a part of the LIVE community.

Xiaomu: Our backend team focuses on building and optimizing a real-time, high-performance, large-scale distributed infrastructure for live streaming in TikTok. Our frontend and mobile teams focus on delivering the best live-streaming experience to global users.

The TikTok Live team is growing in new markets, including Australia. What do you think are some opportunities for growth and impact within your team?

Omer: We are hiring! If you enjoy solving challenging engineering problems, please join us! The impact you will create is truly addictive. Live is a rapidly growing group within TikTok, with a unique set of technical challenges.

Bo: Australia is a mature market with strong direct competitors, one of the best places to verify new ideas before rolling out features globally. We need more local partners and talent in order to achieve these goals!

Xiaomu: Talent from different cultures will bring different perspectives and definitely will help us to go further together.

Looking to LIVE it up (see what we did there)? Check out available positions on the TikTok Live team here and find a role where you can inspire creativity, growth, and joy every day.