After a blockbuster Black Friday week, TikTok and its owner ByteDance are shaking up their global e-commerce product and data science teams, according to two company staffers and a December memo viewed by Business Insider.
The move was designed to streamline collaboration in areas like artificial intelligence, as well as “improve operational efficiency,” per the memo.
As part of the change, which was implemented in the first week of the month, global e-commerce product and design team leader Zhou Sheng is stepping aside. Zhou helped build the company’s e-commerce product and “greatly facilitated” its global development, ByteDance e-commerce head Bob Kang wrote in his memo. After the restructuring, regional e-commerce product and user growth managers will report to Chen Songlin, a ByteDance executive who earlier worked on TikTok’s Chinese sister app, Douyin.
The company also restructured its global e-commerce data science team. Managers will report to the executive Zhang Heng with the goal of centralizing the group’s measurement and AI strategies, per the memo.
AI has been a big focus at TikTok Shop this year, one of the staffers said.
“Pretty much every team is working on it to some degree,” the employee said. Some of the work is customer-facing, while other efforts are designed to improve internal efficiency, they added.
TikTok Shop has undergone a series of restructurings and job cuts over the past year as the company has sought to get its e-commerce business off the ground in key markets like the US. In April, the company cut workers on its governance and experience team and restructured the group, handing more power to staffers based in Singapore or China.
TikTok Shop’s US staff have been under pressure to perform this year after global leadership felt the group failed to meet performance expectations in 2024, BI previously reported. The e-commerce platform, which officially launched in the US in late 2023, faced headwinds earlier this year as its sellers stared down threats of a political ban and rising import costs related to tariffs.
Things appear to be looking up. This holiday season, the company said it drove over $500 million in US sales during the four-day window between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. More household-name brands have joined TikTok Shop in the US recently, including Disney, Ralph Lauren, and Samsung.
Fears of a potential ban have faded for some merchants, as the Trump administration has repeatedly signed executive orders delaying enforcement of the law that requires ByteDance to sell its US business or face removal from app stores. In September, the Trump administration said it had approved a $14 billion sale of the US app in a deal that could involve Oracle, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, and Rupert Murdoch.
TikTok did not respond to a request for comment.
