Senior Software Engineer, Capacity & Optimization - USDS

Responsibilities

About the team:
Capacity & Optimization Engineering team focus on site-wide performance and capacity optimization at the intersection of all Tik Tok products, services, and physical infrastructure (Servers, Data Centers, Network). This role will focus on optimizing Infrastructure performance and capacity at various altitudes to balance services, infrastructure, and business constraints by using Operations Research skills to build and improve mathematical optimization models and solutions.

This role is uniquely positioned to optimize infrastructure resources at the most strategic levels with company level impact. This is one of the most cross functional roles at the company, with the opportunity to work with a variety of engineering and business teams to power the rapid growth of Tik Tok's products. This engineer will help to ensure optimal operation of our infrastructure resources from both a cost and technology perspective, facilitating tens of billions of user requests, tens of exabytes of data and terabits/s of network flow.

Come and help build one of the largest fleet and internet services in the world!

• Design and develop large-scale optimization software systems that ensure reliable and efficient planning. These systems bridge business strategy with precise technical execution, incorporating regional and temporal bin-packing, optimal service placement, service migrations, and streamlined hardware refresh processes.
• Effectively lead large engineering efforts while implementing the most complex parts of the system and process design yourself.
• Partner with Finance and business teams to balance cost efficiency with technical and product considerations.
• Work cross-functionally to define problem statements, collect data, build software driven models and make recommendations to drive change and optimization at the most strategic levels.
• Identify capacity-related issues proactively and work across technical and business teams to define and implement solutions.
• Collaborate with data center engineering teams, strategize, and project infrastructure needs 2-5 years in the future, influence next generation data center development, and develop recommendations and strategies that give a unique edge to Oracle hardware infrastructure.
• Demonstrated success leading large engineering projects and initiatives. Defining goals, managing ambiguity, inspiring and leading other engineers and non-technical contributors.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, relevant technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Proficient in Golang, C/C++, or other coding languages and designing large scale software systems.
• Proficient in scripting languages like Python and Shell, enabling efficient Linux troubleshooting and automation.

• Knowledge of cloud architecture and data center infrastructure.
• Knowledge of server technology, rack architecture and at-scale cloud infrastructure deployment.
• Technical understanding of server platform architecture, design and development, with emphasis on at scale deployment.
• Technical understanding of commodity storage and memory technologies (SSDs, HDDs, tape, DRAM etc.) and knowledgeable on storage and/or memory industry trends

Tik Tok 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,…