# Staff+ Software Engineer, Privacy

**Company:** [Anthropic](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/anthropic)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA, New York, NY, Seattle, WA
**Role:** Security Engineering
**Salary:** $405k – $485k/yr
**Experience:** 12+ years
**Skills:** Python, Go, differential privacy, federated learning, secure multi-party computation, homomorphic encryption, secure enclaves, Distributed Systems, Cloud Infrastructure, Data Governance, Threat Modeling, GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, data classification
**Posted:** 2026-08-07

> This foundational privacy engineering role designs privacy-preserving architectures, infrastructure, governance systems, and compliance controls for large-scale AI training and inference. It requires substantial software engineering experience, privacy expertise, and technical leadership across engineering, research, legal, and product teams.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities

- Design and implement privacy-preserving architectures for AI training and inference systems operating at very large scale, using techniques such as differential privacy, federated learning, and secure multi-party computation.
- Partner with researchers to implement privacy-preserving training methods that protect user data while maintaining model quality.
- Build foundational privacy infrastructure, including automated data discovery, classification, access controls, audit logging, and lifecycle management.
- Translate regulatory requirements such as GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, and the EU AI Act into technical implementations and automated compliance controls.
- Architect data governance systems for tracking data lineage, purpose limitation, and retention across distributed AI systems.
- Lead privacy reviews and threat modeling for new models and features, identifying risks and designing scalable mitigations.
- Partner with product and infrastructure teams to embed privacy controls into inference systems, user interfaces, and data pipelines.
- Develop privacy engineering toolkits and frameworks that enable engineers to build privacy-preserving features by default.
- Design privacy-preserving analytics and measurement systems that provide useful insights without exposing individual user data.
- Evaluate emerging privacy technologies from academia and industry, and contribute to open-source tooling and AI privacy standards.
- Advocate for privacy practices as a core part of AI safety.

## Requirements

- Experience applying privacy engineering principles in production systems, including privacy by design, data minimization, and purpose limitation.
- Proficiency in Python, Go, or similar languages, with experience building and operating production systems at scale.
- Experience designing and implementing privacy infrastructure for systems with a large user base.
- Experience with data governance, classification, or data lifecycle management systems.
- Understanding of privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA, with the ability to translate legal requirements into technical designs.
- Experience conducting privacy reviews, threat modeling, or risk assessments.
- Written and verbal communication skills sufficient to build alignment across engineering, research, legal, and product teams.
- 12+ years of experience in a software engineering role, including building and operating large-scale infrastructure.
- 3+ years of experience leading large, complex projects as a technical lead.
- Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and experience in a relevant field.

## Nice-to-haves

- Hands-on experience with privacy-enhancing technologies such as differential privacy, homomorphic encryption, secure enclaves, and secure multi-party computation.
- Experience building privacy infrastructure or controls for machine learning or AI systems.
- Experience establishing a privacy engineering practice or being an early hire in a function.
- Experience with distributed systems and cloud infrastructure at scale.
- Experience serving as a technical lead on complex, multi-quarter projects.
- Contributions to open-source privacy tooling, privacy research, or industry standards.

## Compensation and Benefits

- Annual salary: **$405,000–$485,000 USD**.
- Hybrid policy: Staff are expected to work from an office at least 25% of the time; some roles may require more office time.
- Visa sponsorship is available for eligible roles and candidates.

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