Tech Lead, Recommendation Infrastructure
TikTok
San Jose, CA · Posted November 13, 2026
Just laid off? Start here: a plan for the first weeks
More in California job market · Tech Lead jobs in California (25) · All Tech Lead jobs (48) · Technology & Software · Engineering jobs
More roles at TikTok
- Machine Learning Engineer, Recommendation, Alliance E-Commerce · Seattle, WA
- Account Manager - CPG Care, Global Business Solutions
- Senior Machine Learning Engineer (CV/NLP/Multimodal/LLM) -E-commerce Governance · Seattle, WA
- TikTok Shop - Category Manager, Luxury Resale · Los Angeles, CA
- Machine Learning Engineer - TikTok-Data-Search-Search Quality · San Jose, CA
- Machine Learning Engineer, Search - Local Services Team · San Jose, CA
Similar jobs
- Portal & Infrastructure Tech Lead · Faraday Future · El Segundo, CA
- Entry Level Construction Inspector · Gannett Fleming · Concord, CA
- Construction Administrator · Lambda · San Jose, CA
- Construction Administrator II · Manufacturers and Traders Trust Company · York, PA
- Senior Consultant, Boiler Inspector · Liberty Mutual Insurance · MA
- Building Inspector (GS-08/09) · Architect of the Capitol · Washington, DC
Where San Jose, CA ranks
Where San Jose, CA placed in our monthly rankings, month by month. Each month stays online at its own address.
November 2026
- #1Best cities for marketing pay after cost of living$204k · of 16
- #1Best cities for aerospace and defense pay after cost of living$187k · of 19
- #2Best cities for security pay after cost of living$220k · of 10
- #3Best cities for technology pay after cost of living$205k · of 80
- #5Best cities for technology jobs1,449 openings · of 100
- #5Cities with the most jobs that do not need a four-year degree in the West Coast162 jobs · of 47
Rankings about engineering jobs
- Best cities for software and engineering jobs #1 San Francisco (3,412 openings)
- Best cities for engineering pay after cost of living #1 San Mateo ($216k)
- Most requested AI skills in engineering jobs #1 AI tools in daily work (6.1%)
- AI tools named most often in engineering jobs #1 Claude (1.7%)
- Employers with the most engineering jobs #1 Amazon (2,992 roles)
How AI is used in this kind of work
AI use among construction and building inspectors is little observed so far. Measured exposure for construction and building inspectors: 5% (little observed).
Share of this job’s tasks that AI is already used for at work, from real usage. It is not a forecast of job loss, and a low number means no use seen yet. Source: Anthropic Economic Index.
TikTok has filed one layoff notice in the last twelve months, covering 250 workers, most recently August 2026. These are public filings with state labor departments, and an open role can sit alongside them. See the filings
Skills this job asks for
Say which you have and which you want to build. We use it to match you to jobs like this one.
About the job
The Recommendation Infrastructure Team is responsible for building up and optimizing the infrastructure for our recommendation system to provide the most stable and best experience for our TikTok users. This team builds stable, efficient, flexible and general-purpose recommendation systems, platforms and data applications to support the rapid iteration and growth of TikTok products.
We are looking for a Tech Lead who is excited to dive deep into complex challenges in the recommendation and big data spaces and be able to provide technical leadership to key projects. You will be responsible for building and leading the TikTok recommendation infrastructure, and have the opportunity to partner closely with a globalized engineering teams in a high-impact and fast-paced environment.
Responsibilities - What You'll Do - Grow and lead a team of engineers committed to creating innovative distributed systems to empower large-scale recommendation and machine learning systems; - Build extremely efficient, scalable and reliable online systems and data pipelines, optimize and evolve the system continuously so as to support the skyrocket increase in both user traffic as well as the data amount; - Work with cross functional teams and key stakeholders to define roadmap, drive initiatives and deliver end-to-end infrastructure solutions to address critical product challenges and improve recommendation performance; - Support TikTok recommendation global development and operation with reliable and scalable infrastructure.
Minimum Qualifications - Bachelor's degree or above, majoring in Computer Science, or related fields; - 5+ years of engineering experience in building large-scale distributed systems with 1+ years of engineering technical leadership experience; - Excellent programming, troubleshooting, and optimization skills in one or more general purpose programming languages including but not limited to: C/C++, Java, Python. - Experienced in at least one area of the following areas: personalized recommendations, search engine, advertising, machine learning infrastructure, distributed storage systems, big data frameworks; - Ability to think critically and to formulate solutions to problems in a clear and concise way; - Effective communication skills and a sense of ownership and drive.