Machine Learning Engineer Manager

TikTok's Trust and Safety team in San Jose is seeking a senior machine learning engineering leader to design and deploy cutting edge multimodal models that combine natural language processing and computer vision for content recognition and safety. This role blends hands on model development with cross functional leadership, guiding efforts from data curation through strategy modeling to full deployment to support scalable and compliant moderation at speed.

Responsibilities

• Develop efficient content recognition models for high priority scenarios such as Child Safety (CSAM), Cross-border Sync (CBS), and misinformation to enhance automated moderation capabilities.
• Tackle challenges in cross lingual, multimodal, and low resource settings to improve generalization while meeting complex compliance requirements.
• Collaborate with the Recommendation, Policy, and Product teams to craft joint safety strategies and enable governance from content recognition to traffic control.
• Engage in the full stack development process, from data curation and strategy modeling to model deployment, with the aim of improving system response time and the granularity of compliance.

Requirements

• Experience in multimodal algorithm development with exposure to large model deployments in real world scenarios; familiarity with content moderation tasks; modeling experience in safety or compliance domains is preferred.
• Strong grasp of compliance driven requirements and the ability to translate policy needs into practical technical solutions.
• Proven skill in cross functional collaboration, capable of driving joint policy design and integrated system implementation.
• Publications in top conferences (for example NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV) or demonstrated success in competitive AI challenges.
• Highly responsible and self motivated, with a deep interest in content safety technology and the ability to adapt to a fast evolving risk governance landscape.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance from day one
• 401(k) plan with company match
• Paid parental leave
• Short term and long term disability coverage
• Life insurance
• Wellbeing benefits
• 10 paid holidays per year
• 10 paid sick days per year
• 17 days of Paid Personal Time, prorated at start with accruals increasing over tenure
• Discretionary bonuses or incentives
• Restricted stock units

Compensation

• Base salary range: $244,800 - $450,000 per year for San Jose, CA.
• Compensation may vary outside this range based on qualifications, skills, competencies, experience, and location. Base pay is part of the Total Package and may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses or incentives and restricted stock units.

LA County candidates

• Interacting with internal or external clients and colleagues, sometimes without supervision.
• Handling confidential information, proprietary data, and access to IT systems with care.
• Using sound judgment in day to day decision making.

About TikTok

TikTok is a leading destination for short form mobile video, with a mission to inspire creativity and bring joy. The company operates globally from offices in multiple cities, including its main hubs in Los Angeles, Singapore, New York, London, and Tokyo, among others.

Why join us

Joining TikTok means contributing to a creative product that helps people express themselves, discover content, and connect. A diverse, global team works together to foster curiosity, humility, and meaningful impact in a fast growing tech environment. The culture emphasizes continuous learning and collaboration with an always day one mindset to drive breakthroughs for users and the company.

Diversity & Inclusion

TikTok is committed to an inclusive workplace where diverse voices and perspectives are valued. The company aims to reflect the communities it serves and to create an environment that supports belonging for all employees.

TikTok Accommodation

TikTok provides reasonable accommodations in recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities or other protected needs. If assistance is required, please submit a request at the provided accommodation contact.