Head of IT

San Jose

Regular

R&D

Job ID: A124853B

to this job

Responsibilities

About the Team The USDS JV IT organization builds and operates the systems that enable the workforce to work productively and securely. IT brings together employee support, endpoint engineering, office networking, converged physical-security technology, and internally developed platforms. We combine dependable service delivery with software engineering to solve problems at scale, improve the employee experience, and protect the company. Team Intro We are seeking a Head of IT to lead the engineering, operations, and service delivery of this portfolio. This leader will own help desk services; mobile and unified endpoint management (MDM/UEM) and security-agent operations; office networks; badge-reader, camera, and related converged security systems; our internally developed virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution; and a portfolio of automation and agentic AI projects across IT. This is a software-engineering leadership role with end-to-end operational accountability. You will lead the research, design, development, and reliable operation of multiple functional areas, participate in business planning and investment decisions, and set a department-level 6–12-month technical roadmap. You will build the leadership and engineering capabilities needed to run IT as a portfolio of services and products—not simply a collection of vendor tools or support queues. Our VDI platform is built on a substantially customized, Kubernetes-native implementation on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Its scope includes server-side session orchestration and brokers, desktop images, identity and access integrations, cloud infrastructure, observability, and deployment automation. Alongside this platform, the team develops API-driven workflows, self-service capabilities, and AI agents that improve support and operational execution while retaining clear human accountability. Key Responsibilities - IT Service Delivery & Employee Experience：Service & Lifecycle: Direct support operations, service desk intake, knowledge management, and escalations; coordinate employee onboarding, moves, and offboarding with HR and IAM. Service Portfolio & Metrics: Establish service tiers, asset inventories, and SLAs; track response/resolution times and user satisfaction to drive engineering improvements. - Office Technology：Endpoint & Security Agents: Oversee endpoint management (MDM/UEM), OS lifecycle, and security agent deployment/health (EDR, vulnerability scanning) across the fleet. Office Networking: Lead design, operation, and access control for office LAN/WAN and Wi-Fi; support new site buildouts and network changes with Workplace teams. Converged Physical Security: Own the lifecycle, network integration, and health of access control badges, cameras, and VMS platforms in partnership with Physical Security. -IT Engineering (In-House VDI)：VDI Platform Ownership: Lead architecture, software development, and operations for the proprietary VDI platform (Kubernetes controllers, session brokers, desktop images, IAM integrations). Performance & Delivery: Optimize launch times and streaming responsiveness; establish staged rollouts, rollback protocols, capacity planning, and front-line to engineering escalations. -Automation & Agentic AI：Reusable Automation: Build API-first workflows, backend services, and IaC/CI/CD pipelines for self-service, provisioning, and automated remediation.Production Agentic AI: Deploy support assistants, retrieval, and diagnostic agents with strict RBAC, data boundaries, and human-in-the-loop controls for high-risk actions.AI-Assisted Development: Integrate AI coding/investigation tools while maintaining engineering accountability for code quality, reviews, and releases. -Department Leadership & Strategy：Set strategy and investment priorities. Build the department and its leadership pipeline. Lead company-level, cross-functional delivery -Reliability, Security & Operational Governance：Own service health and resilience: Establish service-level objectives, monitoring, on-call and escalation arrangements, incident command for IT service outages, and tested continuity and recovery plans. Use post-incident reviews to eliminate recurring failures, reduce operational toil, and maintain sustainable support coverage.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications - 10+ years of experience in software, platform, or infrastructure engineering, including 5+ years in people management leading engineering teams; demonstrated experience developing technical leads or front-line managers. - Strong server-side software engineering experience: A track record of leading the design, development, and production operation of distributed services or internal platforms. Ability to evaluate API and data-model design, concurrency, state management, performance, resilience, and code quality—not only administer commercial IT products. - Department-level technical ownership: Experience owning a substantial product line or multiple functional areas, developing medium- to long-term technical plans, and delivering cross-departmental initiatives with measurable business outcomes. - IT operational leadership: Experience owning enterprise service delivery and infrastructure operations, including employee support and multiple domains such as endpoint management, networking, virtual desktops, or workplace technology. Ability to lead specialists across the full portfolio and establish service objectives, incident management, and recovery practices. - Modern platform engineering: Practical experience with cloud infrastructure, containers or Kubernetes, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, observability, and API-based integration, together with secure software development and automated testing. - Automation delivery: Demonstrated ability to turn recurring operational problems into maintained software or automated workflows, with measurable improvements in quality, reliability, or efficiency and appropriate safeguards for privileged actions. - Business and people leadership: Ability to prioritize investments, manage vendors and resources, develop teams, and communicate technical and operational trade-offs clearly to senior leaders and cross-functional partners. Preferred Qualifications - Experience leading a combined IT engineering and service-delivery organization, including help desk, endpoint, network, and workplace technology teams. - Experience building or extending VDI, remote-workspace, or session-orchestration platforms, particularly Kubernetes operators, Go-based backend services, distributed session state, or low-latency desktop streaming. - Experience with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, OKE, Terraform, Argo CD/GitOps, and metrics and logging platforms such as Prometheus, Grafana, or Kibana. - Experience with enterprise MDM/UEM, endpoint security-agent lifecycle management, OS compatibility testing, and platforms such as Workspace ONE, CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Panorama/Prisma, or Cisco Meraki. - Experience integrating and operating physical access control, badge-reader, camera, video-management, or other converged security systems in partnership with Physical Security and Workplace teams. - Experience delivering production AI agents or AI-assisted IT workflows, including retrieval, tool/API or Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations, evaluation, approval controls, and auditable execution. - Experience supporting geographically distributed employees or BPO operations, and leading platform transitions with business continuity, user adoption, and support readiness.

Job Information

【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Annually)

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $257400 - $616000 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 USDS

TikTok 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, 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