Staff+ Software Engineer, Privacy (AI)

TL;DR

Staff+ Software Engineer, Privacy (AI): Building privacy-preserving architectures and infrastructure for large-scale AI training and inference systems with an accent on differential privacy, data governance, and automated compliance controls. Focus on designing distributed privacy systems, translating regulations into technical implementations, and solving open-ended challenges at the intersection of privacy engineering, AI safety, and large-scale infrastructure.

Location: San Francisco, New York City, or Seattle; hybrid work with at least 25% of staff time in an office. Visa sponsorship is available for eligible candidates.

Salary: $405,000–$485,000 USD annually

Company

A public benefit corporation developing reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems intended to be safe and beneficial for users and society.

What you will do

• Design and implement privacy-preserving architectures for large-scale AI training and inference using techniques such as differential privacy, federated learning, and secure multi-party computation.
• Build foundational privacy infrastructure for data discovery, classification, access control, audit logging, lifecycle management, and data lineage.
• Partner with research, product, and infrastructure teams to embed privacy controls into models, inference systems, interfaces, and data pipelines.
• Translate GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, and EU AI Act requirements into technical designs and automated compliance controls.
• Lead privacy reviews, threat modeling, risk assessments, and scalable mitigation design for models and product features.
• Establish privacy engineering frameworks, evaluate emerging technologies, and contribute to open-source tooling and industry standards.

Requirements

• Production experience applying privacy engineering principles, including privacy by design, data minimization, and purpose limitation.
• Proficiency in Python, Go, or a similar language, with experience building and operating production systems at scale.
• Experience designing privacy infrastructure, data governance, classification, or lifecycle management systems for large user bases.
• Understanding of privacy regulations and ability to translate legal requirements into technical implementations.
• Experience conducting privacy reviews, threat modeling, or risk assessments.
• Strong written and verbal communication across engineering, research, legal, and product functions; a bachelor's degree or equivalent experience is required.

Nice to have

• Hands-on experience with differential privacy, homomorphic encryption, secure enclaves, or secure multi-party computation.
• Experience building privacy controls for machine learning or AI systems.
• Experience establishing a privacy engineering practice or joining a function at an early stage.
• Experience with distributed systems and cloud infrastructure, technical leadership of complex multi-quarter projects, or contributions to privacy tooling and standards.
• 12+ years of software engineering experience and 3+ years leading large, complex projects as a technical lead.

Culture & Benefits

• Collaborative work across research, engineering, policy, and business functions.
• Focus on high-impact AI safety and large-scale research efforts.
• Competitive compensation with optional equity donation matching.
• Generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and office collaboration.
• Visa sponsorship support and access to an immigration lawyer for eligible hires.