Policy Manager, Search - Trust and Safety

Responsibilities: As a Policy Manager, Search Policy in our Trust & Safety team, you will have the opportunity to work with teams of product managers, data scientists, user researchers, operations, legal and various relevant stakeholders to craft policies and safety strategies for Search and Search product features. This person will play a critical role in shaping TikTok’s safety and editorial policies for a rapidly growing suite of TikTok Search products, ensuring they are defensible, clear, and consistently applied. You will be responsible for risk assessment, development of policies, and transparency requirements for new and emerging Search features. You will partner closely with product, enforcement, legal, and business teams, and provide thought leadership on complex and cross-cutting issues. This role is highly strategic and hands-on, requiring the ability to manage both immediate priorities and long-term frameworks. Identify and anticipate product and content safety risks to support new launches of Search policies, products and features, leveraging solutions to effectively address the risks by optimizing policy iteration & implementation procedures to let our users engage with a safe content ecosystem. Support the safe and responsible development and go-to-market of Search features help with search and discovery on TikTok, by conducting pre-launch impact assessments to identify and mitigate potential real-world product harms. Author and maintain policies governing search indexing, ranking, and AI features (e.g., AI Overviews, Snippets). Work closely with cross-functional partners and internal experts to understand emerging trends or risks and partner with PMs and ML engineers to code policy rules directly into ranking algorithms and automated moderation models. Proactively address policy gaps driven by Generative AI, LLMs, and evolving user query behaviors. Design benchmarks and evaluation suites to measure policy enforcement accuracy, false positives, and algorithmic bias. Act as the final policy authority for high-stakes, real-time search escalations during breaking news and global crises.

5+ years of experience in product policy, trust and safety, legal tech, regulatory compliance, or content moderation strategy within a technology company. Demonstrated ability to navigate the tech product development lifecycle, interpret Product Requirement Documents (PRDs), and translate complex policy concepts into user‑centric product requirements and roadmap deliverables. Experience drafting or enforcing policies specifically targeting Large Language Models (LLMs), retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG), or multimodal search systems. Proven track record of evaluating complex, highly ambiguous trade‑offs between free expression, user safety, and product quality. Demonstrated ability to lead complex, cross‑functional technical initiatives without formal authority over team members. Exceptional communication skills, with extensive experience drafting formal policy documents and presenting to executives. Ability to independently analyze enforcement data and policy impact metrics. Preferred Qualification(s): Deep understanding of search engine architecture, information retrieval systems, content ranking principles, or generative AI models. Familiarity with global internet governance frameworks, freedom of speech laws, and international human rights standards. Trust & Safety Content that this role interacts with includes images, video, and text related to everyday life, but it can also include (but is not limited to) bullying; hate speech; child safety; depictions of harm to self and others, and harm to animals. Hence, it is possible that this role will be exposed to harmful content on a daily basis. 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. 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.