Privacy Engineering Director

About DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is a privacy-focused online company with a remote-first culture, boasting over 300 team members since its founding in 2008. The company is profitable since 2014 and generates annual revenue exceeding $100 million USD. Their products include privacy-respecting browsers across multiple platforms, a search engine, and AI tools like Duck.ai which integrates private chats with various AI models. Their culture emphasizes trust, inclusivity, and full project ownership for each team member.

Your Role

As a Privacy Engineering Director on the Privacy Functional Team, you will lead the resolution of the toughest, most ambiguous privacy challenges affecting multiple DuckDuckGo products. You will use your expertise in privacy engineering, audit frameworks, and teamwork to spearhead important initiatives around private browsing, search, and agentic computing.

Recent efforts include:

• Developing privacy engineering frameworks for AI-assisted browsing products that address novel concerns around user data in these workflows.
• Creating technical solutions enabling private search indexing while maintaining rigorous privacy guarantees at scale.

You will manage complex privacy projects end-to-end, enhance privacy triage and review processes, build automation to reduce engineering effort, mentor privacy engineers, and influence company-wide privacy strategies.

Candidate Profile

• Over 10 years of experience leading privacy audits, reviews, or technical privacy programs for consumer products with over a million users.
• At least 4 years in privacy engineering leadership roles developing infrastructure tools, data minimization techniques, or similar privacy-focused solutions.
• Held Director, Head of, or VP positions with direct management and recruitment responsibilities and significant technical scope.
• Proven ability to directly responsible individual (DRI) major multi-team privacy projects with minimal oversight.
• Excellent communication prowess capable of translating privacy requirements into practical engineering decisions balancing multiple stakeholders.
• Track record of improving organizational workflows through automation and scalable review system implementations.
• A passion for privacy and advancing trust standards online.

Compensation and Benefits

The role offers an annual salary of $243,800 USD plus stock options. DuckDuckGo maintains transparent compensation aligned by role level and geographic region.

Company health benefits are available to US-based employees. The company also supports wellbeing with paid parental leave, office setup allowances, and co-working stipends.

Work Conditions and Additional Information

• Work is fully remote with a flexible schedule but expects about 40 hours weekly without core hours.
• Attendance on video calls is required.
• Travel twice yearly is expected: once for the annual all-hands meeting and once for a team retreat, each lasting approximately 4–5 days, participation encouraged.
• Employment is contingent upon passing a background check.
• Applicants must provide accurate and truthful information during the hiring process; misrepresentation can lead to offer denial or termination.

Diversity and Inclusion

DuckDuckGo offers equal opportunity employment and prohibits discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, sex, disability, and other protected characteristics. The hiring process is designed to be accessible, and accommodations can be requested for disabilities or medical conditions.

Use of AI in Hiring

The company employs AI technology to assist in reviewing applications and test projects to improve recruiting efficiency but retains human oversight in all final hiring decisions. Personal data is handled according to privacy policies, and transparency regarding AI use is maintained. Alternative processes for those uncomfortable with AI use in hiring are available upon request.