TikTok’s US plans are up in the air due to a divest-or-ban law that puts its future in jeopardy. But it’s still offering six-figure salaries to workers this year in key areas like e-commerce and artificial intelligence.
It’s sought to hire data scientists to sharpen its search algorithm, court workers to grow its e-commerce platform TikTok Shop, and bring in machine learning engineers to improve its content feed and recommendations.
The company’s jobs portal lists over 1,800 open roles in the US in cities like Austin, San Jose, Seattle, and New York.
Like other Big Tech firms, work expectations at TikTok and its owner, ByteDance, are demanding. The company runs performance reviews twice a year, and low scorers can be placed on performance-improvement plans or even shown the door. But the opportunity to work at one of the most influential tech companies in the world continues to draw in talent.
Outside e-commerce, TikTok is shaking up areas like music marketing and young people’s news habits. If it can navigate political tides in the US and China, where ByteDance was founded, it will stand alongside YouTube and a few other players in shaping the next phase of media.
“From a career growth standpoint, you have access to huge budgets and big names,” a former staffer said of working at TikTok. “Everyone in the industry wants to talk to you.”
While TikTok and ByteDance don’t disclose salary information publicly (unless required by state law), they do submit pay ranges in federal filings when they look to hire workers from outside the US.
To understand more about the company’s pay rates, Business Insider reviewed thousands of TikTok salary offers for foreign hires at the company, as well as its owner, ByteDance, for the first three quarters of this reporting year that ran through June 30. The results don’t include equity or other benefits that employees often receive in addition to base pay. But they paint a picture of the range of pay a worker might expect in roles like software engineering, data science, or product management.
The foreign-hire data shows a wide range of salaries at the companies. For example, a finance representative could earn $65,000 a year, and a global head of product and design position could fetch a $949,349 annual salary.
Backend software engineers at TikTok could earn between $144,000 and $301,158, based on the salary data, though rates increased beyond that for specialties like trust and safety. Data scientist positions at TikTok were generally offered between $85,821 and $283,629 — or more in specific areas like e-commerce. For TikTok machine learning scientists, the range was between $168,000 and $390,000, while general marketing managers were offered between $85,000 and $430,000.
These salary offers fall in line with pay rates in federal applications at other Big Tech firms. Meta’s first-quarter visa filings revealed it offered data scientists between $122,760 and $270,000, for example. Meanwhile, a staff software engineer at Google could receive between $220,000 and $323,000, according to the company’s first-quarter filings.
Here are the salary ranges TikTok and ByteDance offered for other roles in key business areas, based on recent applications. TikTok and ByteDance did not respond to requests for comment.
E-commerce and TikTok Shop roles
TikTok Shop – Celebrity Team Live Operation Manager: $94,000
TikTok Shop – US Data Analyst – Logistics: $128,000
TikTok Shop – Campaign Strategy Operations Manager: $132,000
TikTok Shop – Category Manager – Health: $135,000
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TikTok Shop – Anti-Fraud Ops Program Mgr – Global Selling: $180,000
TikTok Shop – Data Scientist: $218,000 to $304,000
Product Manager, User Growth Customer Lifecycle-TikTok Shop: $220,000
Strategy Manager, E-Commerce: $228,000 to $230,000
Software Engineer – E-commerce Recommendation Infrastructure: $237,000 to $315,207
TikTok Shop – Inventory Placement Strategy Manager: $250,000
TikTok Shop- Compliance Operation: $257,600
Senior Machine Learning Engineer, E-commerce: $320,000
Tech Lead – E-commerce Recommendation Infrastructure: $320,113
Logistics Procurement Lead, TikTok US E-commerce: $350,000
Senior Data Scientist, Content E-commerce: $350,000
Tech Lead, Global E-commerce Governance Platform: $365,000
Global E-commerce Solutions Manager: $480,000
AI and machine learning roles
Software Engineer (AI Platform): $144,000
Research Scientist (TikTok AI Privacy): $188,000
Product Manager GenAI Safety, Trust & Safety: $218,400
Senior Product Designer, Creation (AI Projects): $221,368
Machine Learning Engineer – Computer Vision: $228,960
Software Engineer, Machine Learning Infrastructure: $270,000 to $320,783
Site Reliability Engineer, AI Applications: $276,000
AI Product Manager: $300,010
Product Manager Lead, Emerging Product & AI Safety: $336,000
AI Security Researcher – Security Flow: $340,000
Senior Machine Learning Engineer, TikTok Recommendation: $386,115
Search roles
Search Product Operations – Creator Search Optimization: $110,000
Software Engineer – TikTok Search Business Infrastructure: $154,880 to $214,720
Product Manager, Search Ads: $205,000
Machine Learning Engineer – Search Ads: $229,200 to $354,000
Machine Learning Engineer – TikTok Search: $241,200 to $300,000
Senior Machine Learning Engineer – TikTok Search Business: $268,920
Product Manager – TikTok Search: $287,500
Product Manager, Search Content Ecosystem: $400,000
Leader of Search and Recommendation Product (ByteDance): $540,552
Search Ads Closed-loop Product Manager: $564,000
