SRE Tech Lead Manager, Video Platform - USDS

About the Team

TikTok's video system is a world-leading video platform that provides multimedia storage, delivery, and transcoding services. As part of the USDS, the Video Platform team is responsible for building the next-generation video processing platform, delivering excellent experiences for billions of users worldwide.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to a team of Site Reliability Engineers focused on building observable, fault-tolerant video services with high availability.
• Drive architectural decisions for large-scale, globally distributed service mesh architectures.
• Establish and maintain production ownership models, incident response protocols, and service level agreements.
• Develop strategic roadmaps for observability and automation initiatives that enhance system reliability.
• Balance technical contributions with people management responsibilities, including career development, performance evaluations, and team growth.
• Foster a culture of trust, continuous learning and improvement, and knowledge sharing within your team and across the organization.
• Lead security initiatives to safeguard critical assets, partnering with security and compliance teams to implement robust protocols and enforcement that ensure data protection and regulatory compliance across all services.

Requirements

Minimum Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience and expertise in designing, analyzing, and troubleshooting large-scale distributed systems with various databases, caching solutions, and other web service components.
• Experience running high-availability web services at massive scale, with comprehensive knowledge of cloud-native architectures and advanced networking concepts.
• Experience in design/development or SRE in video streaming or related services.
• Previous experience leading a small to mid-size team while maintaining significant "hands-on" technical contributions.
• Strong understanding of Unix/Linux operating systems internals and networking fundamentals.
• Proficiency in writing production-grade code in Go, Python, Java, or similar languages.
• Proven track record of establishing and implementing SRE best practices across engineering organizations.

Preferred Qualifications

• Previous experience in design/development or SRE in video processing applications.
• Experience in large-scale Kubernetes systems.
• Deep expertise in algorithms, data structures, and systems design with proven ability to architect complex technical solutions.

About USDS TikTok

USDS Joint Venture LLC is dedicated to the safety and security of millions of Americans who create, discover, and connect with what they love on the apps we operate. The Joint Venture has been established in compliance with the Executive Order signed by President Trump on September 25, 2025. Our foundation is a comprehensive data privacy and cybersecurity program we operate under defined safeguards to protect national security and secure U.S. user data, apps, and the algorithm. We safeguard the U.S. content ecosystem, holding decision-making authority for trust and safety policies and moderation.

USDS Joint Venture helps ensure Americans can continue to express their creativity, discover new hobbies and interests, and build thriving communities and businesses on a global scale. On-site presence across teams allows the company to operate with greater speed, alignment, and agility — especially in areas like real-time decision-making, team development, and integrated execution. As such, the company is shifting from a hybrid work model to a fully in-person schedule up to 5 days a week.

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 toward every day. We strive to do great things with great people. We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make an 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.

Pay

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $198,360 - $416,100 annually. Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies, and experience. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that may include additional discretionary bonuses/incentives and restricted stock units. Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location.

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).

Schedule

This role requires a fully in-person schedule up to 5 days a week.