Head of Risk Detection, Trust & Safety
Apply NowCompany: TikTok
Location: San Jose, CA 95123
Description:
Responsibilities
The Head of Risk Detection for Trust & Safety will have a focus on Investigation with a mandate to identify enforcement, compliance and user experience gaps/improvement areas by testing systems, processes, ways of operating and testing user experience based (e.g., acting as below 18 users or logged-out users). This team will help drive T&S to a higher standards of safety, both in design and execution by building recommendations based on these independent diagnostics.
- Through centralized intelligence gathering, enhanced signal monitoring, and Red Team operations, you will be responsible for leading our Risk Detection team to detect, analyze, and address emerging threats, compliance gaps, and user experience vulnerabilities, ensuring a resilient and adaptive platform that keeps pace with evolving risks, particularly those driven by AI.
- You are accountable for identifying and mitigating, through a systematic approach, potential hazards before they escalate into tangible threats, preemptively safeguarding individuals, organizations, or systems against harm during the detection and validation stages of the Risk Intelligence Lifecycle.
- You are expected to provide inputs for trend detection workflows and support investigation/IM for critical issue areas, ensuring both short-term and long-term risk management.
- You will lead our Risk Intelligence team, under Risk Detection, to test the quality and relevance of the 1st party and 3rd party signals to ensure their accuracy and effectiveness to inform decisions
- You will lead our Red team, under Risk Detection, to define risk detection priorities in terms of teams, processes, type of users, systems based on aligned criteria (e.g., safety risk, regulatory requirements (in place or to come), previous incidents, observed behaviours e.g., in partnership with Ethics and Compliance), with actionable recommendation plans based on identified gaps
Qualifications
Minimum Qualifications:
- Extensive leadership experience in risk detection, intelligence, or red teaming, with management experience for a "red team" or trust & safety adversarial testing
- Knowledge of the broad Trust & Safety industry, within and outside the company. Strong understanding of T&S ecosystem, with subject matter expertise in select extreme risk domains (Hate, VBDA, Mental Health, Human Exploitation).
- Risk & Intelligence Analysis Skills: Expertise on strong methodology, knowing how to draw out insights from complex risk analysis, systematically identify and mitigate potential hazards, and guide others on deep-dive investigations of leads. Ability to set direction for the team on framework and analysis methodologies as well as auditing business processes.
- Skilled in business writing and presentations, ability to distill complex information
- Ability to establish relationships with cross-functional stakeholders to solve problems, resolve escalations, influence strategy, and drive synergies across teams. Always making thoughtful, strategic decisions in the long-term interest of T&S.
- Ability to support teams with coaching, development, and talent planning. Ability to build up Red Team and define specific roles & responsibilities, workflows, and capabilities needed.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Significant leadership experience managing senior contributors and managers in a top technology firm, intelligence agency, or equivalent.
- Knowledge of risks that are specific to social media platforms across multiple markets/regions, industry, and understanding of potential threat trajectories and cross product threat picture.
- Ability to maintain an inquisitive mindset, looking to find risks and building processes to test solutions. Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced environment, adapt to challenges, and deliver deep-focused work.
Job Information
[For Pay Transparency]Compensation Description (Annually)
The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $220000 - $450000 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 TikTok
TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. At TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. TikTok's global headquarters are in Los Angeles and Singapore, and we also have offices in New York City, London, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo.
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.
Trust & Safety
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.
TikTok Accommodation
TikTok 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/RA-request
The Head of Risk Detection for Trust & Safety will have a focus on Investigation with a mandate to identify enforcement, compliance and user experience gaps/improvement areas by testing systems, processes, ways of operating and testing user experience based (e.g., acting as below 18 users or logged-out users). This team will help drive T&S to a higher standards of safety, both in design and execution by building recommendations based on these independent diagnostics.
- Through centralized intelligence gathering, enhanced signal monitoring, and Red Team operations, you will be responsible for leading our Risk Detection team to detect, analyze, and address emerging threats, compliance gaps, and user experience vulnerabilities, ensuring a resilient and adaptive platform that keeps pace with evolving risks, particularly those driven by AI.
- You are accountable for identifying and mitigating, through a systematic approach, potential hazards before they escalate into tangible threats, preemptively safeguarding individuals, organizations, or systems against harm during the detection and validation stages of the Risk Intelligence Lifecycle.
- You are expected to provide inputs for trend detection workflows and support investigation/IM for critical issue areas, ensuring both short-term and long-term risk management.
- You will lead our Risk Intelligence team, under Risk Detection, to test the quality and relevance of the 1st party and 3rd party signals to ensure their accuracy and effectiveness to inform decisions
- You will lead our Red team, under Risk Detection, to define risk detection priorities in terms of teams, processes, type of users, systems based on aligned criteria (e.g., safety risk, regulatory requirements (in place or to come), previous incidents, observed behaviours e.g., in partnership with Ethics and Compliance), with actionable recommendation plans based on identified gaps
Qualifications
Minimum Qualifications:
- Extensive leadership experience in risk detection, intelligence, or red teaming, with management experience for a "red team" or trust & safety adversarial testing
- Knowledge of the broad Trust & Safety industry, within and outside the company. Strong understanding of T&S ecosystem, with subject matter expertise in select extreme risk domains (Hate, VBDA, Mental Health, Human Exploitation).
- Risk & Intelligence Analysis Skills: Expertise on strong methodology, knowing how to draw out insights from complex risk analysis, systematically identify and mitigate potential hazards, and guide others on deep-dive investigations of leads. Ability to set direction for the team on framework and analysis methodologies as well as auditing business processes.
- Skilled in business writing and presentations, ability to distill complex information
- Ability to establish relationships with cross-functional stakeholders to solve problems, resolve escalations, influence strategy, and drive synergies across teams. Always making thoughtful, strategic decisions in the long-term interest of T&S.
- Ability to support teams with coaching, development, and talent planning. Ability to build up Red Team and define specific roles & responsibilities, workflows, and capabilities needed.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Significant leadership experience managing senior contributors and managers in a top technology firm, intelligence agency, or equivalent.
- Knowledge of risks that are specific to social media platforms across multiple markets/regions, industry, and understanding of potential threat trajectories and cross product threat picture.
- Ability to maintain an inquisitive mindset, looking to find risks and building processes to test solutions. Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced environment, adapt to challenges, and deliver deep-focused work.
Job Information
[For Pay Transparency]Compensation Description (Annually)
The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $220000 - $450000 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 TikTok
TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. At TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. TikTok's global headquarters are in Los Angeles and Singapore, and we also have offices in New York City, London, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo.
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.
Trust & Safety
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.
TikTok Accommodation
TikTok 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/RA-request