Privacy Engineering Director

About the role

Working On The Privacy Functional Team, you'll be a Privacy Engineering Leader at DuckDuckGo. You'll step in on the most complex, ambiguous, and high-stakes privacy challenges that arise across our products. Using deep expertise in privacy engineering, audit frameworks, and cross-functional collaboration, you'll lead critical privacy initiatives that shape the future of private browsing, private search, agentic computing, and work on related projects.

Responsibilities

• Build a privacy engineering framework for DuckDuckGo's agentic browsing products.
• Solve novel challenges around user data in AI-assisted workflows.
• Design technical solutions to enable private search index capabilities while preserving strict privacy guarantees at scale.
• Owning high-complexity privacy projects from definition to delivery.
• Evolve our privacy triage and review processes.
• Build automation that reduces engineering toil.
• Grow the next generation of privacy engineers.
• Contribute significantly to privacy strategy across the company.

Requirements

• 10+ years experience leading privacy reviews, audits, or technical privacy programs at a consumer-facing product company with a large (1M+) user base.
• 4+ years privacy engineering leadership experience - building infrastructure tools, data minimization systems, or equivalent privacy-preserving technical solutions.
• Director, Head of, or VP-level experience with direct management and hiring responsibilities and meaningful technical scope.
• Proven ability to DRI high-complexity, cross-functional projects with minimal direction.
• Strong communication skills, with a track record of translating privacy principles into practical engineering decisions across competing stakeholder needs.
• Experience improving organizational processes — identifying bottlenecks, implementing automation, and building scalable review systems.
• Passion for privacy and raising the standard of trust online.

Qualifications

• Director, Head of, or VP-level experience with direct management and hiring responsibilities and meaningful technical scope.
• Proven ability to DRI high-complexity, cross-functional projects with minimal direction.
• Strong communication skills, with a track record of translating privacy principles into practical engineering decisions across competing stakeholder needs.
• Experience improving organizational processes — identifying bottlenecks, implementing automation, and building scalable review systems.
• Passion for privacy and raising the standard of trust online.

Skills

• Deep expertise in privacy engineering, audit frameworks, and cross-functional collaboration.
• Ability to solve complex privacy challenges.
• Leadership in developing privacy engineering frameworks and solutions.
• Experience in managing and growing a team of privacy engineers.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills.

Benefits

• $243,800 USD annually and stock options.
• Compensation is transparent across the organization, and all team members within the same professional level and global region receive the same compensation.
• Eligibility for company-sponsored health benefits is limited to team members based in the United States.
• The hiring process is two-way, with opportunities for learning about the company and envisioning your future role.
• The team supports team member wellbeing through paid parental leave, office setup, and co-working allowances.

Pay

$243,800 USD annually and stock options.

Schedule

Average full-time commitment of 40 hours per week, with an expectation to attend meetings on camera via video conferencing and travel at least two times a year.

Company Information

DuckDuckGo is an online protection company and remote-first team of 300+ on a mission to raise the standard of trust online. Founded in 2008 and profitable since 2014, annual revenue now exceeds $100m USD and millions use our browser on Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android, our search engine, and the DuckDuckGo subscription. We also offer private, useful, and optional AI, including Duck.ai, which lets you chat privately with ChatGPT, Claude, and other AIs, all in one place. Our culture of trust, inclusivity, and empowered project management underpins everything we do, where each team member takes full ownership of their projects, from scoping and execution to postmortem.

Equal Opportunity Employer

DuckDuckGo provides equal work opportunities to all team members and applicants, and it prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, caste, religion, age, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by our policies or federal, state, or local laws. We want to ensure that our hiring process is accessible. If you need reasonable accommodation for any part of the application process because of a medical condition or disability, please send an email to careers@duckduckgo.com to let us know the nature of your request.

Disclosure Statement

We use artificial intelligence (AI) technology to assist in reviewing and summarizing job applications and test projects, including those tools integrated into our recruitment vendor platforms. We use AI to flag potentially fraudulent applications, analyze and summarize applicants’ experience, interviews, and project performance, and help streamline our selection process. Key Principles: Data Privacy: All information provided in your application will be handled in accordance with our Recruiting Privacy Policy. We ensure that your personal information is protected and used solely for recruitment purposes. Human Oversight and Accountability: The AI technology is designed to support our hiring team by providing insights and summaries of applications and evaluations of test projects against scoring rubrics. All final evaluations and hiring decisions, however, will be made by our hiring team, who will consider the AI's input alongside other factors. Transparency: We believe in transparency regarding our hiring practices. If you have any questions about how AI is used in our recruitment process, please feel free to reach out to us. By submitting your application, you acknowledge and consent to the use of AI technology in our review process. If you would like to request an alternative selection process, please contact us as at careers@duckduckgo.com.