Backend Architect - TikTok Shop (Governance Service)
Summary
Backend architect for TikTok Shop's Governance Service in Singapore, owning the architecture and technical direction of a governance sub-domain covering risk detection and marketplace trust and safety. Designs scalable distributed systems, drives platform evolution, and applies AI tools to engineering workflows using Golang, Python or Java.
TikTok Shop is a content e-Commerce business utilising international short video products as carriers. Our aim is to become the preferred choice for users seeking to discover and purchase affordable, high-quality products. We provide users with tailored, vibrant, and efficient consumption experiences while enabling merchants to access robust and dependable platform services in various scenarios, such as live e-Commerce and short video content e-commerce.
Our vision is to make affordable and high-quality products easily accessible, enhancing the quality of life for all. We are looking for passionate and talented people to join our product and operations team, to build an e-Commerce ecosystem that is innovative, secure and intuitive for our users and brands. Governance Service is a global team responsible for ensuring a safe and trustworthy marketplace for buyers, sellers and creators.
We work on risk detection, fairness and sustainability of the e-Commerce ecosystem, content and product quality, and friction-free experiences. Responsibilities:
- Own the architecture and technical direction of a defined sub-domain within TikTok Shop governance, covering both business systems and foundational platforms.
- Understand complex business scenarios, identify long-term system issues, define technical evolution plans, and drive critical projects from goal decomposition through delivery and review.
- Design scalable and maintainable systems, balancing business delivery, platform development, system reliability and long-term maintainability.
- Lead the evolution from business-specific solutions to reusable platform capabilities, making clear trade-offs between common capabilities and short-term customisation.
- Continuously improve existing systems by addressing architectural weaknesses and improving performance, stability and scalability.
- Apply AI to engineering systems or real business problems, and integrate AI coding tools into development, testing, refactoring, troubleshooting or documentation workflows.
- Work across teams and regions to deliver complex, long-running or high-uncertainty projects.
Minimum Qualifications:
- Experience in e-commerce, B2B or complex business platforms, with an understanding of the complexity created by multiple roles, workflows and collaborating systems.
- Experience as the owner of a core system or critical platform capability, with the ability to clearly explain system boundaries, architectural trade-offs and long-term evolution.
- Bachelor's degree or above in Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Engineering or a related discipline.
- Proficiency in at least one programming language, such as Golang, Python or Java, with solid knowledge of data structures, algorithms and common design patterns.
- Familiarity with the design principles of highly available, high-concurrency and high-performance distributed systems, including common storage systems and middleware.
- Proficiency with AI coding tools and the ability to incorporate them into day-to-day engineering work.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Hands-on experience applying AI to business workflows, intelligent operations, engineering productivity or technical governance, with a clear understanding of implementation boundaries and outcome validation.
- Experience working across countries, languages or regions, with practical exposure to cross-market differences.