Safety Policy Lead, Youth Safety

What you'll be doing

• Research and develop safety policies governing youth safety harms on Discord, including CSAM, grooming and solicitation, child exploitation, and age assurance, covering both reactive harm response and proactive age-appropriate design.
• Own the full policy lifecycle for your domain: problem scoping, data justification, structured XFN consultation, testing against enforcement criteria, and post-launch feedback loop management.
• Partner with Legal early in the development process. Embed compliance requirements for KOSA, COPPA, DSA Article 28, and the Online Safety Act into policy design before drafting begins.
• Co-develop enforcement infrastructure with Trust and Safety, Engineering, and ML teams, including golden datasets, classification hierarchies, ML signal specifications, and IKB anchor criteria.
• Own the feedback loop from implementation and QA back to your policy work. When QA findings or overturn data indicate a policy gap, you drive the revision.
• Collaborate with civil society, NCMEC, ICAC, and other external child safety organizations. Represent Discord externally in this domain with credibility and consistency.
• Deliver rapid policy responses to emerging child safety threats, including cross-functional coordination during incidents and regulatory notifications where applicable.
• Own at least one functional domain area for the Safety Policy team beyond your harm portfolio. Current team needs include policy implementation systems, AI/LLM governance, or safety-by-design frameworks.
• Expected travel: 15%

What you should have

• 5+ years of experience in trust and safety, policy development, or child safety roles at a technology platform or civil society organization focused on child protection.
• Deep expertise in youth safety: CSAM, NCMEC/ICAC frameworks, CSAM hash-matching systems, grooming and solicitation patterns, age assurance methodologies, and the regulatory landscape governing minors online.
• Direct experience with KOSA, COPPA, DSA child safety provisions, and/or the Online Safety Act. Regulatory literacy is required, not a bonus.
• Proven ability to write policy that survives implementation: clear enforcement criteria, defined classification hierarchies, and usable edge case guidance.
• Experience working with ML and automation teams to translate policy criteria into detection signals. You do not need to write the model, but you need to know what the model needs from you.
• Comfort making decisions under ambiguity and pressure.
• Strong written and verbal communication for audiences ranging from frontline moderators to regulators to executive leadership.
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent professional experience.

Bonus points

• Advanced degree in law, public policy, child development, psychology, or a related field.
• Experience with Discord's platform or gaming and creator communities.
• Multilingual capabilities, particularly in languages relevant to Discord's global user base

Minor Metadata

Location: San Francisco Bay Area (Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma counties)

Base Salary Range: $192,000 to $216,000 + equity + benefits