Rapid Response Specialist - USDS

Responsibilities
The Policy Escalations Team for TikTok USDS is a multi-disciplinary team that handles risk detection, prevention and handling in the United States. The team is dedicated to maintaining a safe and secure online environment for users by actively monitoring and responding to emergent threats, ensuring compliance with legal regulations, and addressing real-life implications of online content.

As a USDS Trust & Safety Policy Escalation specialist, you will play a critical role in safeguarding the integrity of our platform by effectively managing high-priority escalations and emergency risks. This individual contributor role requires strong leadership skills, strategic thinking, and the ability to collaborate with internal and external stakeholders across multiple regions.

You will be instrumental in designing and operationalizing our response to emergency escalations, promptly detecting and removing content related to various online risks and harms. Your role involves collaborating with internal and external partners, to ensure user safety in time-critical situations. You'll also contribute to post-mortem and root cause analyses, enhancing our strategies to mitigate the recurrence of similar incidents.

This position will entail a Sunday through Thursday work week. The role also requires participation in a 24/7 on-call rotation, including holiday support.

Responsibilities
USDS Rapid Response
- Support the formal establishment of the USDS Rapid Response Program within the USDS Policy Escalations team. This will require the training curriculum and workflows concerning safety, data disclosure, and escalation management.
- Collaborate with leaders of other functions to integrate risk containment processes and ensure cross-functional synergy, including alignment with local leadership and the Child Safety Team and Emergency Response Team. Coordinate with internal and external partners, to ensure user safety in high-priority escalations.
- Triage and contain high-priority escalations for the USDS Trust and Safety organization, proactively identifying and evaluating emerging risks and threats. Execute instant decision-making while analyzing a variety of factors that include imminence of danger, sensitivities, and graphic content.
- Develop and execute investigative strategies for tackling escalations, driving action items, holding partners accountable, and communicating updates in real-time.
- Review content/accounts and make enforcement decisions based on USDS policies; conduct content/account reviews for purposes of query validation.
- Lead and manage high-priority escalations, ensuring compliance with U.S. user privacy regulations and protocols, such as USDS data-sharing requirements. Handle sensitive information in compliance with Terms of Service, applicable laws, and regulations, and internal SOPs while protecting user privacy.
- Conduct proactive sweeps and investigations to understand emerging trends and ultimately mitigate harms before they cause escalations.

Data Analysis
- Analyze quantitative and qualitative data to generate analytic judgments and products.
- Utilize data plus internal tools and systems to help Trust & Safety teams analyze trends, identify patterns, and share insights; transform data sets and quantitative and qualitative analysis into compelling visuals.
- Share data and insights that illuminate policy gaps and grey areas, all with the intention of improving policy to enable clear, scalable enforcement.

Process & Tooling Improvements
- Identify tooling discrepancies, provide recommendations for improvements, and liaise with engineering and product teams to implement solutions; enhance team’s work through recommendations for optimizing tooling.

Qualifications
Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience in a related field.
- 3+ years of professional experience in Incident Management, Trust & Safety, or Investigations, ideally within a global tech or social media environment.
- Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional projects and drive operational excellence across different global regions and time zones.
- Exceptional communication skills, with a demonstrated ability to distill complex technical or safety issues into clear, actionable insights for diverse audiences.
- Proven ability to thrive in fast-paced, ambiguous environments, prioritize work, and make grounded decisions in important situations.
- Experience with, or willingness to be exposed to, sensitive and graphic content that violates Community Guidelines (including but not limited to: child safety, self-harm, hate speech, and violent extremism).
- Ability to independently pull and analyze data to identify trends and inform evidence-based decision-making.

Preferred Qualifications
- Extensive experience in investigating and mitigating high-priority platform risks, including but not limited to Child Safety, Violent Extremism, or Human Exploitation.
- Sophisticated understanding of Policy and Community Guidelines to drive enforcement and contain platform risk during breaking-news events or viral crises.
- Strong aptitude for navigating complex internal tools, proprietary systems, and content moderation interfaces.
- Your ability to work in a high tempo environment, adapt, respond to day-to-day challenges of the role.
- Your resilience and commitment to self-care to manage the emotional demands of the role.

Trust & Safety
Content that this role interacts with includes images, video, and text related to every-day life, but it can also include (but is not limited to) bullying; hate speech; child safety; depictions of harm to self and others, and harm to animals. Hence, it is possible that this role will be exposed to harmful content on a daily basis.

TikTok recognises that keeping our platform safe for the TikTok communities is no ordinary job which can be both rewarding and psychologically demanding and emotionally taxing for some. This is why we are sharing the potential hazards, risks and implications in this unique line of work from the start, so our candidates are well informed before joining.

We are committed to the wellbeing of all our employees and promise to provide comprehensive and evidence-based programs, to promote and support physical and mental wellbeing throughout each employee's journey with us. We believe that wellbeing is a relationship and that everyone has a part to play, so we work in collaboration and consultation with our employees and across our functions in order to ensure a truly person-centred, innovative and integrated approach.


About USDS
TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. Our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. U.S. Data Security (“USDS”) is a subsidiary of TikTok in the U.S. This new, security-first division was created to bring heightened focus and governance to our data protection policies and content assurance protocols to keep U.S. users safe. Our focus is on providing oversight and protection of the TikTok platform and U.S. user data, so millions of Americans can continue turning to TikTok to learn something new, earn a living, express themselves creatively, or be entertained. The teams within USDS that deliver on this commitment daily span across Trust & Safety, Security & Privacy, Engineering, User & Product Ops, Corporate Functions and more.

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


Job Information
【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Annually)
The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $96000 - $217023 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.