Senior Software Engineer, AI Infrastructure - Developer Tooling

Responsibilities About the Team

We're building the AI-powered backbone of our developer tools. You'll work on three core systems: a retrieval infrastructure powering our AI products, a coding agent that assists users in writing code, and the evaluation frameworks that measure their effectiveness.

• Design and scale retrieval pipelines including vector search, BM25, and hybrid retrieval strategies
• Build and optimize embedding pipelines, chunking strategies, and re-ranking systems
• Develop query understanding and rewriting components to improve retrieval relevance
• Manage vector database infrastructure at production scale

• Build agent architectures that support multi-step code generation, refactoring, debugging, and diagnostics
• Implement tool-use patterns (function calling, code execution sandboxing, file system interaction)
• Develop context management strategies for long-form code understanding

• Design and maintain evaluation frameworks for retrieval quality and agent task completion
• Build custom benchmark suites for real-world coding task assessment
• Create reproducible testing infrastructure with automated regression detection

• Bachelor's degree in CS, EE, or related field (or equivalent experience)
• 4+ years of software engineering experience
• Strong proficiency in Python (primary) and Type Script/Java Script
• Experience with at least one systems-level language (C++, Rust, Go)
• Practical experience integrating LLMs into applications (prompt engineering, context management, output parsing)
• Understanding of agent patterns: tool use, multi-turn reasoning, error recovery
• Familiarity with code-specific LLM tasks (generation, summarization, analysis)

• Master's or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or related field
• Contributions to open-source developer tooling, retrieval systems, or coding assistants
• Experience with AST parsing, code analysis tools, or language servers
• Familiarity with rendering pipelines or cross-platform framework architecture
• Experience deploying and optimizing ML models in production (latency, cost, reliability)

Founded in 2012, Byte Dance's mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. With a suite of more than a dozen products, including Tik Tok, Lemon8, Cap Cut and Pico as well as platforms specific to the China market, including Toutiao, Douyin, and Xigua, Byte Dance has made it easier and more fun for people to connect with, consume, and create content.

Inspiring creativity is at the core of Byte Dance's mission. Our innovative products are built to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect – and our global, diverse teams make that possible. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and enrich life - a mission we work towards every day. As Byte Dancers, we strive to do great things with great people.

We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. By constantly iterating and fostering an "Always Day 1" mindset, we achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our Company, and our users. When we create and grow together, the possibilities are limitless. Join us.

Byte Dance 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 Byte Dance, our mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. 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.

Byte Dance 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

Compensation Description (Annually)
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