Principal Engineer - Identity & Privacy

United States Digital Space LLC; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Skyscanner is seeking a Principal Engineer - Identity & Privacy to shape the technical foundations for identity, consent and privacy across traveller-facing products and data platforms. This senior role oversees strategy, standards and platform controls spanning web, app, backend, experimentation, analytics and advertising.

You will partner with Engineering, Product, Legal, Privacy, Security and Data Governance to balance product value with traveller trust and cost, delivering scalable,

Qualifications

• Privacy and data-protection requirements translated into engineering decisions with stakeholders.
• Experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems in identity, data platforms or related areas.
• Ability to lead technical change across multiple teams without direct line authority.
• Proven judgment balancing product value, trust, privacy, reliability and cost.

Responsibilities

• Define and communicate the long-term vision for identity, consent and privacy engineering.
• Lead identity-at-scale work across sessions, tracking, accounts and ad tech.
• Shape end-to-end identity and consent state flows from web/mobile to data pipelines.
• Translate privacy principles into reusable platform controls and standards.
• Partner with Engineering, Product, Legal, Privacy, Security and Data Governance to navigate trade-offs.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership for large-scale initiatives in privacy and data platforms.
• Raise engineering bar through observability, health metrics and incident learnings.

Skills

Privacy engineering

Scale design

Technical leadership

Technical judgement

End-to-end thinking

Standards & governance

Collaboration

Tools

Databricks

OpenTelemetry

SQL

AI tools

Job description

About Skyscanner

Everyone loves travelling, but planning is not without its challenges. That's why we've spent 20 years building tools that turn travel-planning chaos into a breeze. Today, around 160 million travellers count on us every month to skip the whole “47 browser tabs open” phase and find flights, cars, and hotels quickly and easily.

Joining Skyscanner means becoming part of a global brand that's striving to become the planet's go-to travel hack accessible for all.

Our vision? To be the world's number one travel ally. (Ambitious? Yes, but, hey, that's what got us here).

Now, we’re on the lookout for a Principal Engineer - Identity & Privacy to help us bring that vision to even more travellers.

About the role(Hybrid)

As our Principal Engineer for Identity & Privacy, you’ll shape the technical foundations that help us earn traveller trust while safely unlocking the data and AI capabilities behind brilliant product, personalisation, experimentation and advertising experiences.

This is a senior technical leadership role with impact right across Skyscanner. You’ll own the technical strategy and set standards for identity, consent and privacy engineering across our traveller-facing products, data platforms and operational systems — spanning web, app, backend, experimentation, analytics, advertising and machine learning.

What you’ll be doing

• Setting our technical strategy: You’ll define and communicate the long-term vision and roadmap for identity, consent and privacy engineering, aligning it with our product strategy, traveller trust goals and data and AI ambitions.

• Shaping identity at scale: You’ll lead our technical approach to purpose-scoped identifiers and consent-aware data processing across sessions, tracking, advertising, accounts, consent and derived identifiers.

• Connecting the dots end-to-end: You’ll establish how identity and consent state flows from web and app surfaces through backend services, event streams and data pipelines to downstream consumers — making a complicated ecosystem feel a lot less complicated.

• Turning privacy into engineering practice: You’ll translate privacy principles and legal guidance into reusable engineering patterns, platform controls, decision frameworks and measurable standards, including clear expectations around retention, deletion, masking, access control and auditability.

• Leading across Skyscanner: You’ll partner with Engineering, Product, Legal, Privacy, Security, Data Governance, Data Science, Marketing, Ads and Analytics to navigate trade-offs, create clarity and turn ambiguous problems into decisions teams can deliver against.

• Getting hands-on with the big stuff: You’ll provide technical leadership for large-scale initiatives spanning consent platform capabilities, privacy-safe experimentation, data retention and deletion, and traveller-trust features, while guiding teams towards simple, scalable, reliable and cost-effective solutions.

• Raising the engineering bar: You’ll use observability, engineering health and incident learnings to improve how we operate, while coaching and mentoring engineers and championing high standards, constructive challenge and inclusive collaboration across our Engineering community.

About you

• Privacy-engineering experienced: You’ve translated privacy and data-protection requirements — including GDPR, PECR, CCPA/CPRA or equivalent global frameworks — into practical engineering decisions, working effectively with Legal, Privacy, Security and Data Governance partners.

• Built for scale: You’ve designed, built and operated large-scale distributed systems across identity, data platforms or adjacent areas such as consent, authentication, advertising technology or customer data infrastructure.

• An influential technical leader: You’ve led significant technical change across multiple teams without direct line authority, creating clarity, alignment and momentum when ownership is distributed.

• Strong in technical judgement: You’re comfortable making decisions where product value, traveller trust, privacy requirements, operational reliability and cost are all competing for a seat at the table.

• End-to-end minded: You can reason confidently across client surfaces, backend services, event streams, data products, ML features, analytics, partner exports and operational tooling — and understand how a decision in one part of the system can ripple through the rest.

• Practical about standards: You know how to turn policy into technical controls and measurable quality standards that teams can consistently use in real systems, rather than another document destined for a forgotten browser tab.

• Clear, collaborative and credible: You can create shared engineering practices, write clear technical strategy and work effectively with senior stakeholders across Engineering, Product, Legal, Security and Data Governance. Familiarity with privacy and consent technologies, experimentation, personalisation, advertising measurement, Databricks, OpenTelemetry or SQL is valuable but not essential — as is practical experience using AI tools to make engineering work smarter.

What it's like here

We are the real deal - no corporate gloss, no empty promises. Just a team of genuinely curious, caring humans, building things that help travellers explore the world a little easier.

Skyscanner is made up of brilliant humans from every corner of the world. We believe travel makes the world better - and that the same is true of our diverse teams. We're proud to be an equal opportunities employer and are committed to building an inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive and products that are accessible to all.

Sound like your kind of adventure? and help us shape the future of travel.

We're committed to ensuring our application and recruitment processes are inclusive and accessible to everyone. If you require any reasonable adjustments or accommodations for interviews, and/or wish to apply under the Disability Confident scheme, please let your recruiter know. If you’d like more information on any of our policies, such as hybrid working or Parental Leave policies (typically we pay a minimum of 24 weeks birth parent/maternity leave globally), our recruitment team can provide more information on these.