Responsibilities
Join TikTok Ads Core — the powerhouse behind one of the world’s largest advertising ecosystems. As a Senior Backend Engineer, you’ll play a critical role in designing and scaling the high-performance systems that serve billions of ad requests daily. This is a high-impact role suited for engineers who thrive in solving complex system challenges and want to contribute at the intersection of technology, product innovation, and global scale. Why Join Us? As a senior engineer on our team, you will: 1. Drive Technical Excellence in a Global, Mission-Critical System Take ownership of backend infrastructure powering real-time ad delivery at global scale. You’ll lead efforts to optimize system architecture, improve response times, and ensure reliability under extreme concurrency. 2. Lead Innovation Across Ad Products and Formats Collaborate closely with product, engineering, and design teams to launch cutting-edge ad formats. You’ll help shape technical direction across diverse content domains, enabling the platform to meet evolving business and user needs. 3. Solve Deep Technical Challenges at Scale Architect and implement resilient, distributed systems capable of handling massive throughput with millisecond-level latency. You’ll address complex problems around data consistency, system fault tolerance, service degradation, and observability. 4. Mentor and Influence Set the bar for engineering best practices. Mentor junior engineers, contribute to internal knowledge sharing, and lead discussions on performance tuning, system design, and long-term technical strategy. 5. Be a Strategic Partner As a senior contributor, you’ll be involved early in product and technical planning. Your insights will help prioritize features, identify risks, and drive key architectural decisions aligned with long-term growth and scalability. Key Responsibilities 1. Lead the design, development, and optimization of high-concurrency backend services for global ad delivery. 2. Identify and solve complex technical challenges in distributed systems, with a focus on scalability, performance, and fault tolerance. 3. Collaborate across product, infrastructure, and data teams to deliver robust solutions that support new ad formats and business growth. 4. Drive continuous improvements through code quality, architectural reviews, and technical mentorship. 5. Contribute to the evolution of coding standards, operational practices, and internal technical tooling.
Qualifications
Minimum Qualifications 1. Strong computer science fundamentals and proven ability to deliver production-grade backend systems at scale. 2. Proficiency in at least one backend programming language (Go, Java, Python, or C++). 3. Solid understanding of core infrastructure components such as MySQL, Redis, message queues, and Nginx, including experience in tuning for high-load environments. 4. Experience designing and maintaining large-scale, distributed, high-availability services. 5. Excellent communication and collaboration skills; able to lead initiatives and work cross-functionally in a global setting. Preferred Qualifications 1. Deep expertise in Golang and system-level optimization. 2. Prior experience in building and scaling ad delivery systems, recommendation engines, or other real-time systems with extreme concurrency. 3. Experience with observability and troubleshooting tools for large-scale backend systems. 4. Track record of driving large cross-team engineering initiatives. 5. Passion for mentoring, setting technical direction, and driving team-wide improvements.
Job Information
【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Annually)
The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $187040 - $280000 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:
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; and
3. 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 https://tinyurl.com/RA-request
