Design Engineer (Founding Engineer) - TikTok

TikTok
San Jose
Full timeFunction: Entrepreneurship & Venture BuildingSkills: ["Product thinking","Problem-solving","Technical direction","Collaboration","Translating design intent into engineering trade-offs"]

Partner with TikTok’s UX team to reshape the design-to-engineering workflow, reduce handoff friction, and help design-delivered code integrate cleanly into the mainline codebase. Drive technical direction across design and product by systematizing design system components with performance and accessibility. Architect and ship internal AI design tooling—agents, design system plugins, code-generation pipelines, and prototyping platforms—to turn design ideas into production-quality implementations.

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FursaFursa
TikTok
TikTok
1 month ago

Design Engineer (Founding Engineer) - TikTok

✓ Verified Job

Canonical indexed version, validated from employer's careers page.

Source: Company careers pageValidated by: Fursa AI
Last checked: 19 hours agoStatus: Live

Job Summary

Partner with TikTok’s UX team to reshape the design-to-engineering workflow, reduce handoff friction, and help design-delivered code integrate cleanly into the mainline codebase. Drive technical direction across design and product by systematizing design system components with performance and accessibility. Architect and ship internal AI design tooling—agents, design system plugins, code-generation pipelines, and prototyping platforms—to turn design ideas into production-quality implementations.
Location: San Jose
Employment Type: Full time
Job Function: Entrepreneurship & Venture Building

Key Responsibilities

  • •Reshape the design-to-engineering workflow by partnering with product designers and client engineers to reduce handoff friction through shared processes and practices.
  • •Explore new workflows and tooling by running multiple feasibility tracks in parallel.
  • •Lead integration of design-delivered code into the mainline codebase, systematizing design system components, performance, and accessibility into production-quality implementations.
  • •Architect and ship internal AI design tooling, including agents, design system plugins, code-generation pipelines, and prototyping platforms.
  • •Partner with engineering leads to drive the technical roadmap for design system evolution and tooling, translating design intent into engineering trade-offs.

Key Requirements

  • •Ship production mobile or full-stack systems with hands-on engineering experience.
  • •Demonstrate 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).
  • •Use AI coding agents (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code) effectively, including token budgeting and agentic workflows, with a track record of shipping.
  • •Build or ship AI product features or agent-based workflows.
  • •Have founding/early-team experience or evidence of shaping a team/practice from scratch, with strong product thinking to drive ambiguous problems to shipped impact.
Experience:MobileFull-stackAI coding agentsDesign systemsSocialCreatorContent
Skills:Product thinkingProblem-solvingTechnical directionCollaborationTranslating design intent into engineering trade-offs
Tech Stack:IOSSwiftSwiftUIAndroidKotlinComposeAPIsServicesData layerCursorClaude CodeLynx

Company Brief

TikTok
Short-form video platform that lets users create, share, and discover entertainment content through algorithmic recommendations. It also offers advertising and creator tools for brands, influencers, and businesses.
Industry: Digital Media
Company Size: Enterprise (1,001+ employees)
Growth: Scaleup
Headquarters: Singapore, Singapore
Founded: 2016
WebsiteLinkedIn