Software Engineer, AI-Powered Software Assurance

San Jose Regular R&D Job ID: A236737A to this job

Responsibilities We build an internal software assurance platform that helps engineering and security teams analyze source code, assess vulnerabilities and evaluate compliance requirements. The platform combines agentic AI workflows with code-analysis tools to investigate complex codebases and produce actionable, evidence-backed findings.

We focus on deep code understanding across languages, rigorous measurement of analysis quality, and reliable execution at production scale. We are looking for a hands-on software engineer who can expand these workflows’ analytical capabilities and build the reliable, scalable services that run them. Build and improve agentic workflows.

Develop orchestration, tool integrations, context retrieval, state management and recovery mechanisms for multi-step software assurance investigations. Develop deep, multi-language code analysis. Build tools that navigate large repositories, trace control and data flows, resolve cross-file references and dependencies, and connect evidence across files, services and languages.

Combine LLM reasoning with deterministic analysis where appropriate. Measure output quality rigorously. Build representative evaluation datasets, expert-reviewed reference cases and repeatable evaluation pipelines.

Measure precision, recall, false-positive and false-negative rates, evidence correctness and task completion. Use held-out cases to assess generalization, and maintain separation between development and evaluation datasets to reduce evaluation leakage. Drive evidence-based improvements.

Investigate failure cases, then refine prompts, tools, retrieval and orchestration. Demonstrate measurable improvements through controlled comparisons and regression evaluations. Responsibilities - Build scalable, production-grade services.

Develop APIs, execution workers, job scheduling and result management that support concurrent workloads, durable execution, retries, cancellation and tenant isolation. - Improve performance and efficiency. Remove bottlenecks in repository processing, tool execution, context management and model calls. Balance analysis quality against latency, throughput and inference cost. - Make results observable and auditable.

Capture execution traces, tool activity and supporting evidence so teams can reproduce findings and diagnose failures. - Design secure agent execution. Treat repository content and model outputs as untrusted. Working with the security and infrastructure teams, implement tool permissions, sandboxing and data-handling boundaries. - Own features through production.

Write tested, maintainable code, contribute to design reviews, work with platform engineers on deployment, and investigate production issues.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications - Significant experience building backend software or distributed systems, including ownership of production services.

Strong Python skills and working proficiency in at least one more language, such as Go, Java, Kotlin, TypeScript/JavaScript, C/C++ or Rust. - Hands-on experience building agentic or LLM-powered applications, including tool use, orchestration, retrieval and systematic failure analysis. - Ability to understand large, unfamiliar codebases and reason about application behavior, control flow, data flow and dependencies across multiple languages. - Familiarity with code-analysis techniques such as abstract syntax trees, symbol resolution, call graphs, static analysis or language-server tooling. - Experience evaluating AI systems or other systems with imperfect outputs, including dataset design, meaningful quality metrics and regression testing. - Solid backend fundamentals (APIs, queues, persistence, concurrency, idempotency and failure recovery), along with automated testing and CI/CD. - Hands-on experience building, deploying and debugging containerized services on Kubernetes, including resource configuration, health checks and troubleshooting failed workloads.

Ability to communicate uncertainty clearly, separate supported findings from speculation, and work with domain experts to validate results.

Preferred Qualifications - Experience in application security, vulnerability research, secure code review, software quality or compliance analysis. - Familiarity with LangGraph or comparable agent-orchestration frameworks. - Experience with compiler tooling, Tree-sitter, CodeQL, Semgrep, or code-search and indexing systems; familiarity with analysis-result formats such as SARIF. - Experience evaluating retrieval quality, tool-call correctness and multi-step agent behavior.

Familiarity with prompt-injection defenses, agent sandboxing and secure handling of proprietary source code. - Experience with Helm and GitOps-based delivery using Argo CD. - Experience with Redis, including high-availability setups with Redis Sentinel. - Experience with OpenTelemetry, LLM gateways or model-serving systems. Job Information 【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Annually)

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $136800 - $359720 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 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 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.

USDS Reasonable Accommodation

USDS 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/USDS-RA