Data Scientist, Investigations and Insights, Minor Safety - USDS

Responsibilities

About TikTok U.S. Data Security
TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. Our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. U.S. Data Security (“USDS”) is a subsidiary of TikTok in the U.S. This new, security-first division was created to bring heightened focus and governance to our data protection policies and content assurance protocols to keep U.S. users safe. Our focus is on providing oversight and protection of the TikTok platform and U.S. user data, so millions of Americans can continue turning to TikTok to learn something new, earn a living, express themselves creatively, or be entertained. The teams within USDS that deliver on this commitment daily span across Trust & Safety, Security & Privacy, Engineering, User & Product Ops, Corporate Functions and more.

Why Join Us
Creation is the core of TikTok's purpose. Our platform is built to help imaginations thrive. This is doubly true of the teams that make TikTok possible.
Together, we inspire creativity and bring joy - a mission we all believe in and aim towards achieving every day.
To us, every challenge, no matter how difficult, is an opportunity; to learn, to innovate, and to grow as one team. Status quo? Never. Courage? Always.
At TikTok, we create together and grow together. That's how we drive impact - for ourselves, our company, and the communities we serve.
Join us.

Team Intro
Investigations and Insights is a one-stop shop for US market investigations, from which we develop Global solutions. Our subject matter experts discover and investigate an issue and identify high confidence signals that our data analysts and scientists develop into complex queries, establishing the prevalence of a particular problem and enabling further investigation of the threat. We build detection pipelines in partnership with automation teams to surface harmful content. Finally, we identify clear, actionable recommendations for cross-functional partners to strengthen moderation, policy, and product strategies.

Investigations and Insights Data Scientists may be exposed to harmful content in this role as part of their core day-to-day functions, as well as in project work; in response to escalation requests; or by chance.
Some content viewed my violate our community guidelines which include but are not limited to bullying; hate speech; child abuse; sexual assault; torture; bestiality; self-harm; suicide; and murder.

In order to enhance collaboration and cross-functional partnerships, among other things, at this time, our organization follows a hybrid work schedule that requires employees to work in the office 3 days a week, or as directed by their manager/department. We regularly review our hybrid work model, and the specific requirements may change at any time.

Responsibilities:
- Work with a team of experts that not only respond to known bad actors, but proactively search and identify potential threats in order to build scalable protections to keep them out.
- Identify deceptive behavior of threat actors, and collect and analyze signals through data analysis, and work with engineers to improve detection models and develop data driven mitigation strategies. Develop and test predictive models of feature abuse.
- Data mine threat actor behaviors and tactics.
- Actively strengthen intelligence gathering and investigation standard operating procedures.
- Work cross-functionally with product managers, program managers, operations, policy, and communications teams to find gaps in current threat response processes such as detection and mitigation.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Engineering, Economics, Business, other relevant fields, or equivalent experience.
- Familiarity with one of the following issue areas: youth safety and wellbeing, exploitation and abuse, hate and harassment, mental health, nudity and sexual activity, or high risk and regulated activities
- 2 years of experience in threat discovery and prevention or related fields, including 1 year of experience in detecting and investigating multiple types of threats.
- Understanding of statistical analysis.
- Proficiency in SQL or other relational database languages.
- Proficiency in a functional or object oriented programming language (e.g. Python, R).

Preferred Qualifications:
- Understanding of machine learning, including designing and testing models; working knowledge of deep learning, or recommendation systems is a plus.
- Project management skills to ensure impactful output, achieve stakeholder alignment, and manage competing priorities.
- A proven record of identifying signals of nefarious behavior or feature abuse and using creativity with experience to mitigate complex threats.
- Your ability to work in a high tempo environmen