Tiktok : Backend Engineer
PGC: User Creator Product
About
I am a backend engineer at Tiktok working under the PGC organisation (Professionally Generated Content) in a subteam called "User and Creator Product". Our orgs goal is to promote & incentive users to create professionally generated 1 min+ videos. I specifically worked on Tiktok Studio, which is a platform for Tiktok Creators to manage and grow their Tiktok account.
We provide extensive tooling such as post management, comment management, video analytics as well as personalized inspiration videos. We are a horizontal team as we touch upon all stages of the lifecycle of a Tiktok video, from creation, management, deletion and appeal... Therefore cross-team collaboration is guaranteed in all projects.
As for tech stack, Tiktok has huge amounts of traffic so we adopt a microservice architecture. Hence I am familiar with most key components of a distributed system, such as Message Queues, Consul, Kubernetes, Docker etc... As for observability, we work with Grafana and an internal log aggregation platform similar to Open Telemetry
1M+ Tiktok Creators migrated to new standalone Tiktok Studio App
73% Tiktok Studio App Downloads (785k), 75% of standalone app's DNU
113% DAU increase to in-app Creator Studio
~3x improvement on XFN information card intake
Project Highlights
Resource Management Platform
Led a team of 8 engineers to build a BE-driven resource management platform that reduces PM workload while standardizing team SOPs. As BE tech lead, led weekly meetings with key stakeholders, addressing project risks, project scoping, and milestone alignment.
The project is split into 2 phases, the creation flow and consumption flow: Creation flow: Regards the creation of a resource, how it is stored in the database, what information it should contain. Consumption flow: How a resource is served from the data layer and presented on the application layer for users.
Tiktok Studio SDUI Resources
With the recent release of the all-in-one standalone Tiktok Studio app, our org's OKR is to grow the DAU of the app. Therefore, a project we worked on was to design and implement server driven resources within the in-app creator studio to promote the standalone app. The resources in Tiktok Studio would support multiple formats such as Pop-up and Information card.
I co-designed and co-implemented the entire project with my tech lead. Throughout the project, I was responsible for the resource loading, resource context pipeline set up, and server-driven metrics. Moreover, he attended key stakeholder meetings and gave informative design feedback regarding behaviour of the information card.
Tiktok Studio Profile Page Entrance
To grow the DAU of Tiktok Studio, we decided to create a new channel for eligible Tiktok Users to enter our platform through their profile page.
As easy as it may sound since everything is server driven, there was a lot of backend logic and XFN collaboration required to realize this button.
