Investigations and Insights, Data Scientist (IO) - USDS

Responsibilities
TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. Our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. TikTok has global offices including Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Singapore, Jakarta, Seoul and Tokyo.

Why Join Us
At TikTok, our people are humble, intelligent, compassionate and creative. We create to inspire - for you, for us, and for more than 1 billion users on our platform. We lead with curiosity and aim for the highest, never shying away from taking calculated risks and embracing ambiguity as it comes. Here, the opportunities are limitless for those who dare to pursue bold ideas that exist just beyond the boundary of possibility. Join us and make impact happen with a career at TikTok.

About USDS
At TikTok, we're committed to a process of continuous innovation and improvement in our user experience and safety controls. We're proud to be able to serve a global community of more than a billion people who use TikTok to creatively express themselves and be entertained, and we're dedicated to giving them a platform that builds opportunity and fosters connection. We also take our responsibility to safeguard our community seriously, both in how we address potentially harmful content and how we protect against unauthorized access to user data.

U.S. Data Security (“USDS”) is a standalone department 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 user data in the U.S., 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 Trust & Safety, Security & Privacy, Engineering, User & Product Ops, Corporate Functions and more.

We are seeking an experienced Threat Data Scientist to join the Trust and Safety organization within USDS. You will use your investigative and adversarial mindset to help us identify, detect, and mitigate Influence Operation (IO) networks operating on TikTok. You will support a team of cross-functional subject matter experts to data mine threat actor abuse tactics, develop predictive models, and conduct comprehensive proactive and reactive investigations using analytical skills, subject-matter expertise, and regional experience. The Threat Data Scientist will have the responsibility to perform social network analysis at scale to discover, identify, and mitigate the most harmful threats targeting the platform. You will closely collaborate with engineers and behavioral scientists to resolve complex threats that reach across topic or feature areas and will require network analysis and the creation of detection pipelines. You will develop actionable recommendations, and continually iterate solutions to scale your impact. The work of the Investigations and Insights team is critical to TikTok user safety, and the Threat Data Scientist will have the opportunity to identify and mitigate the most harmful threats targeting the platform and our users.

Responsibilities

• Identify deceptive behavior of threat actors, 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.
• Use all available internal and external data sources to produce actionable intelligence on high-harm threat actors, their networks, and threat organizations in the topic area of Influence Operations.
• Data mine threat actor behaviors and tactics.
• Apply structured analytic techniques, data science, and intelligence tradecraft to perform social network analysis of large attribute, ideational, and relational data sets to identify threat actor networks, critical nodes, and kill-chains.
• Work cross-functionally with product managers, program managers, security, operations, policy, and communications teams to address gaps in current threat response processes such as detection and mitigation.
• Collaborate with a team of global experts that respond to known threat actors and proactively build and tailor queries to discover and identify potential threats.
• Help mentor a team of data scientists and data analysts to execute team roadmap.

Qualifications
Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Engineering, Economics, Business, other relevant fields, or equivalent experience.
• 3-5 years of experience conducting social network analysis for social media organizations, law enforcement, and/or intelligence community agencies.
• Experience should include discovering and correlating high-harm threat actors, networks, and organizations across global markets by performing quantitative and qualitative analysis of large data sets including attribute, ideational, and relational data.
• Advanced understanding of statistical analysis.
• Proficient in SQL or other relational database languages.
• Intermediate proficiency in a functional or object oriented programming language (e.g. Python, R).
• Intermediate understanding of machine learning, including designing and testing models; working knowledge of deep learning, or recommendation systems is a plus.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience researching or analyzing global Influence Operations (IO) in order to identify, detect, and develop mitigation strategies against IO networks.
• Work with little oversight and take initiative
• Independently troubleshoot technical issues or bugs
• Rapidly shift priorities based on evolving challenges to the platform
• Identify anomalous behavior and determine ways for further exploring new research leads
• Communicate coherently and crisply to incident response teams and senior leadership
• Communicate complex concepts to broader stakeholders without shared expertise
• Work across time zones with global team members and stakeholders
• 2 years of experience leading projects and managing stakeholder relationships.
• Project management skills to ensure impactful output, achieve stakeholder alignment, and manage competing priorities.
• Critical thinking skills with the ability to apply theorems or analytical techniques to discover insights that are not readily apparent

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.

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 Recruiting.Corp@tiktok.com.
Job Information
The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $144000 - $312444 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.

​

At ByteDance/TikTok our benefits are designed to convey company culture and values, to create an efficient and inspiring work environment, and to support ByteDancers to give their best in both work and life. We offer the following benefits to eligible employees:

​

We cover 100% premium coverage for employee medical insurance, approximately 75% premium coverage for dependents and offer a Health Savings Account(HSA) with a company match. As well as Dental, Vision, Short/Long term Disability, Basic Life, Voluntary Life and AD&D insurance plans. In addition to Flexible Spending Account(FSA) Options like Health Care, Limited Purpose and Dependent Care.

​

Our time off and leave plans are: 10 paid holidays per year plus 17 days of Paid Personal Time Off(PPTO) (prorated upon hire and increased by tenure) and 10 paid sick days per year as well as 12 weeks of paid Parental leave and 8 weeks of paid Supplemental Disability.

​

We also provide generous benefits like mental and emotional health benefits through our EAP and Lyra. A 401K company match, gym and cellphone service reimbursements. The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.

Salary : $144,000 - $312,444