Data Tech Lead Manager, Video Platform

About the role

TikTok video system is a world-leading video platform that provides multimedia storage, delivery, and transcoding services. As part of the USDS Joint Venture, the Video Platform team is responsible for building the next generation video processing platform which provides excellent experiences for billions of users around the world. The Video Platform Data team designs, implements, improves, and operates video data pipelines from data sources to data warehouses ready to serve many partner teams. We are seeking an experienced tech lead manager for the data team who is passionate about data engineering, large-scale data pipeline buildup and runtime operation, ensuring data quality, and solving complex challenges.

USDS Joint Venture LLC is dedicated to the safety and security of millions of Americans who create, discover, and connect on the apps we operate. Established in compliance with the Executive Order signed September 25, 2025, USDS operates a comprehensive data privacy and cybersecurity program under defined safeguards to protect national security and secure U.S. user data, apps, and the algorithm. The Joint Venture safeguards the U.S. content ecosystem, holding decision-making authority for trust and safety policies and moderation. On-site presence across teams enables greater speed, alignment, and agility — especially in real-time decision-making, team development, and integrated execution. The company is shifting from a hybrid work model to a fully in-person schedule up to 5 days a week.

Inspiring creativity is at the core of TikTok's mission. Our innovative product helps people authentically express themselves, discover, and connect — and our global, diverse teams make that possible. 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.

Responsibilities

• Lead and manage a team of data engineers, data analysts, and data SRE, fostering a culture of technical excellence, ownership, and continuous improvement.
• Oversee project management and cross-functional collaboration ensuring high-quality delivery across the project lifecycle.
• Design and build scalable and high-performance real-time and batch data pipelines.
• Optimize large-scale data processing systems for performance, scalability, reliability, and cost efficiency.
• Define and drive architecture standards, including data modeling, pipeline design, and data quality frameworks to ensure trusted datasets.
• Own end-to-end delivery of data solutions from design through development, testing, deployment, and optimization.
• Provide data service support to product & business teams and video SRE teams for continuous cost optimization and performance improvement of video services.
• Define key metrics and leverage data to measure performance, guide prioritization, and support decision making.
• Ensure compliance with data governance, privacy, and security standards in all data solutions.
• Communicate technical concepts and data insights effectively to both technical and executive audiences.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field, or equivalent experience.
• 5+ years of experience building and scaling enterprise-grade data platforms in large-scale distributed data systems, with at least 3+ years in engineering leadership or engineering management overseeing technical teams in a cross-functional, fast-paced environment.
• Hands-on experience building scalable data solutions with big data processing and distributed storage engines such as Hadoop, HDFS, YARN, Spark, Flink, Hive, ClickHouse, etc.
• Strong proficiency in SQL and Python (or equivalent language) for data processing and analytics.
• Knowledge of data pipeline and workflow management tools (e.g., Airflow, Luigi).
• Deep understanding of modern data architectures, including data lakes, data warehouses, and lakehouse patterns.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience optimizing large-scale data systems for performance, efficiency, and cost reduction.
• Ability to influence data strategy and drive alignment across cross-functional teams.
• Experience in video streaming business is a plus.
• Experience building data solutions with AWS, GCP, Azure, and other cloud services is a plus.

Pay

The base salary range for this position is $198,360 – $416,100 annually. Compensation may vary outside this range depending on qualifications, skills, competencies, experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package; this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives and restricted stock units.

Benefits

• Day-one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 401(k) savings 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 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.

Schedule

Fully in-person schedule up to 5 days a week.