Senior Design Engineer (Founding Engineer) - TikTok
Jun 5, 2026 San Jose
About us
TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video and our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy.
- Size: 10,000+ employees
- Industry: Technology: Consumer Internet
Why you should apply for a job to TikTok:
4.5/5 in overall job satisfaction
4.5/5 in supportive management
100% say women are treated fairly and equally to men
100% would recommend this company to other women
100% say the CEO supports gender diversity
Ratings are based on anonymous reviews by Fairygodboss members. See all reviews ›
Responsibilities
About the team
TikTok UX team is responsible for the product design of the TikTok app. Our key vertical ownership areas include Core app Product Infrastructure, Social, Creation, and Design Systems. Providing professional design methods and practices, the team helps improve user experience and working efficiency of these products and areas.
1. Reshape the design-to-engineering workflow - Partner with product designers and client engineers to identify friction in the handoff, and close the gap through better processes and shared practices
2. Explore aggressively - Run multiple feasibility tracks for new workflows and tooling in parallel, rather than picking one and grinding
3. Close the loop into production - Lead how design-delivered code integrates with the mainline codebase, partnering with engineering to systematize design system components, performance, and accessibility into production-quality implementations that improve user experience
4. Build AI design tooling - Architect and ship internal AI tooling (agents, design system plugins, code-generation pipelines, prototyping platforms) that lets every designer move from idea to high-fidelity prototype to shippable code with leverage
5. Drive technical direction across design and product - Partner with engineering leads on architecture, design system evolution, and tooling roadmap. Translate design intent into engineering trade-offs, and vice versa
Qualifications
Minimum Qualifications:
- With engineering experience shipping production mobile or full-stack systems
- Full-stack capability, with deep expertise in at least one mobile stack (iOS / Swift, SwiftUI or Android / Kotlin, Compose) and working knowledge of backend (APIs, services, data layer)
- Deep, hands-on use of AI coding agents (Cursor, Claude Code, etc.) with efficient token budgeting, agentic workflows, and a track record of shipping with them; products you built independently end-to-end strongly preferred
- Experience building or shipping AI product features or agent-based workflows
- Ability to solve complex problems with simple solutions
- Founding or early-team experience, or clear evidence of having shaped a team/practice from scratch
- Strong product thinking, able to drive ambiguous problems all the way to shipped impact
Preferred Qualifications
- Background spanning both design and engineering (designer-turned-engineer, or engineer with formal design training or shipped design work)
- Public craft signal - open source contributions, conference talks, published tooling, or a notable public presence around your work
- Experience with Lynx, or other cross-platform mobile frameworks
- Experience shipping social, creator, or content products at scale
- Passion for TikTok and creator communities
Job Information
[For Pay Transparency] Compensation Description (annually)
The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $121600 - $272000 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 the team
TikTok UX team is responsible for the product design of the TikTok app. Our key vertical ownership areas include Core app Product Infrastructure, Social, Creation, and Design Systems. Providing professional design methods and practices, the team helps improve user experience and working efficiency of these products and areas.
1. Reshape the design-to-engineering workflow - Partner with product designers and client engineers to identify friction in the handoff, and close the gap through better processes and shared practices
2. Explore aggressively - Run multiple feasibility tracks for new workflows and tooling in parallel, rather than picking one and grinding
3. Close the loop into production - Lead how design-delivered code integrates with the mainline codebase, partnering with engineering to systematize design system components, performance, and accessibility into production-quality implementations that improve user experience
4. Build AI design tooling - Architect and ship internal AI tooling (agents, design system plugins, code-generation pipelines, prototyping platforms) that lets every designer move from idea to high-fidelity prototype to shippable code with leverage
5. Drive technical direction across design and product - Partner with engineering leads on architecture, design system evolution, and tooling roadmap. Translate design intent into engineering trade-offs, and vice versa
Minimum Qualifications:
- With engineering experience shipping production mobile or full-stack systems
- Full-stack capability, with deep expertise in at least one mobile stack (iOS / Swift, SwiftUI or Android / Kotlin, Compose) and working knowledge of backend (APIs, services, data layer)
- Deep, hands-on use of AI coding agents (Cursor, Claude Code, etc.) with efficient token budgeting, agentic workflows, and a track record of shipping with them; products you built independently end-to-end strongly preferred
- Experience building or shipping AI product features or agent-based workflows
- Ability to solve complex problems with simple solutions
- Founding or early-team experience, or clear evidence of having shaped a team/practice from scratch
- Strong product thinking, able to drive ambiguous problems all the way to shipped impact
Preferred Qualifications
- Background spanning both design and engineering (designer-turned-engineer, or engineer with formal design training or shipped design work)
- Public craft signal - open source contributions, conference talks, published tooling, or a notable public presence around your work
- Experience with Lynx, or other cross-platform mobile frameworks
- Experience shipping social, creator, or content products at scale
- Passion for TikTok and creator communities
About the team
TikTok UX team is responsible for the product design of the TikTok app. Our key vertical ownership areas include Core app Product Infrastructure, Social, Creation, and Design Systems. Providing professional design methods and practices, the team helps improve user experience and working efficiency of these products and areas.
1. Reshape the design-to-engineering workflow - Partner with product designers and client engineers to identify friction in the handoff, and close the gap through better processes and shared practices
2. Explore aggressively - Run multiple feasibility tracks for new workflows and tooling in parallel, rather than picking one and grinding
3. Close the loop into production - Lead how design-delivered code integrates with the mainline codebase, partnering with engineering to systematize design system components, performance, and accessibility into production-quality implementations that improve user experience
4. Build AI design tooling - Architect and ship internal AI tooling (agents, design system plugins, code-generation pipelines, prototyping platforms) that lets every designer move from idea to high-fidelity prototype to shippable code with leverage
5. Drive technical direction across design and product - Partner with engineering leads on architecture, design system evolution, and tooling roadmap. Translate design intent into engineering trade-offs, and vice versa
Qualifications
Minimum Qualifications:
- With engineering experience shipping production mobile or full-stack systems
- Full-stack capability, with deep expertise in at least one mobile stack (iOS / Swift, SwiftUI or Android / Kotlin, Compose) and working knowledge of backend (APIs, services, data layer)
- Deep, hands-on use of AI coding agents (Cursor, Claude Code, etc.) with efficient token budgeting, agentic workflows, and a track record of shipping with them; products you built independently end-to-end strongly preferred
- Experience building or shipping AI product features or agent-based workflows
- Ability to solve complex problems with simple solutions
- Founding or early-team experience, or clear evidence of having shaped a team/practice from scratch
- Strong product thinking, able to drive ambiguous problems all the way to shipped impact
Preferred Qualifications
- Background spanning both design and engineering (designer-turned-engineer, or engineer with formal design training or shipped design work)
- Public craft signal - open source contributions, conference talks, published tooling, or a notable public presence around your work
- Experience with Lynx, or other cross-platform mobile frameworks
- Experience shipping social, creator, or content products at scale
- Passion for TikTok and creator communities
Job Information
[For Pay Transparency] Compensation Description (annually)
The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $121600 - $272000 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.
Responsibilities
ResponsibilitiesAbout the team
TikTok UX team is responsible for the product design of the TikTok app. Our key vertical ownership areas include Core app Product Infrastructure, Social, Creation, and Design Systems. Providing professional design methods and practices, the team helps improve user experience and working efficiency of these products and areas.
1. Reshape the design-to-engineering workflow - Partner with product designers and client engineers to identify friction in the handoff, and close the gap through better processes and shared practices
2. Explore aggressively - Run multiple feasibility tracks for new workflows and tooling in parallel, rather than picking one and grinding
3. Close the loop into production - Lead how design-delivered code integrates with the mainline codebase, partnering with engineering to systematize design system components, performance, and accessibility into production-quality implementations that improve user experience
4. Build AI design tooling - Architect and ship internal AI tooling (agents, design system plugins, code-generation pipelines, prototyping platforms) that lets every designer move from idea to high-fidelity prototype to shippable code with leverage
5. Drive technical direction across design and product - Partner with engineering leads on architecture, design system evolution, and tooling roadmap. Translate design intent into engineering trade-offs, and vice versa
Qualifications
QualificationsMinimum Qualifications:
- With engineering experience shipping production mobile or full-stack systems
- Full-stack capability, with deep expertise in at least one mobile stack (iOS / Swift, SwiftUI or Android / Kotlin, Compose) and working knowledge of backend (APIs, services, data layer)
- Deep, hands-on use of AI coding agents (Cursor, Claude Code, etc.) with efficient token budgeting, agentic workflows, and a track record of shipping with them; products you built independently end-to-end strongly preferred
- Experience building or shipping AI product features or agent-based workflows
- Ability to solve complex problems with simple solutions
- Founding or early-team experience, or clear evidence of having shaped a team/practice from scratch
- Strong product thinking, able to drive ambiguous problems all the way to shipped impact
Preferred Qualifications
- Background spanning both design and engineering (designer-turned-engineer, or engineer with formal design training or shipped design work)
- Public craft signal - open source contributions, conference talks, published tooling, or a notable public presence around your work
- Experience with Lynx, or other cross-platform mobile frameworks
- Experience shipping social, creator, or content products at scale
- Passion for TikTok and creator communities
Additional Information
- Job category: Design
- Salary: $121,600 – $272,000
- Posted: Jun 5, 2026