Director of Privacy Engineering, Services

Socket.dev; Cupertino (CA); On-site; USD 240,000 - 360,000; Full time

Job summary

Apple seeks an exceptional privacy engineering leader to head a team protecting users’ privacy at scale. You will guide privacy-preserving solutions across Services, educate product teams, and champion privacy values with stakeholders across the company.

You will shape product decisions, drive privacy investments, and address evolving AI privacy challenges as features grow. If you thrive at scale and value privacy as an engine for innovation, this role is for you.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of software development experience, including 5+ years leading engineering organizations.
• Proven track record recruiting, developing leadership talent, and building high-performing engineering cultures at scale.
• Deep expertise designing, building, and operating large-scale privacy systems, tools, and infrastructure.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills and ability to influence outcomes across diverse organizations.

Responsibilities

• Lead a talented group of engineers and specialists enabling privacy-preserving features across Apple Services.
• Represent and champion Apple's privacy values with Engineering, Security, Compliance, Legal, and Product teams.
• Serve as a privacy authority and trusted advisor to leadership, shaping product decisions and investments.
• Address AI privacy challenges by inventing approaches that protect privacy at massive scale.

Skills

Software development

Engineering leadership

Privacy engineering

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or related field

Tools

Differential privacy

Federated learning

On-device processing

Tokenization

Data de-identification

Job description

At Apple, privacy is a fundamental human right and one of our core values, and we treat it as an opportunity for innovation and design rather than an exercise in compliance. Where others see privacy as a constraint to satisfy, we see it as a problem worth inventing for, engineered into our products and services from the start. That mindset led Apple to pioneer Private Cloud Compute and to deploy differential privacy at scale, and it continues to raise the bar for what privacy engineering can achieve.

Apple's Services Engineering organization is home to App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV+, iCloud, and more, touching hundreds of millions of lives every day, and privacy is a cornerstone of all of it.

We are seeking an exceptional privacy engineering leader who sees privacy as an engine for innovation and is ready to be at the center of that commitment for Apple Services.

DESCRIPTION

You will lead a talented group of engineers and specialists whose systems, tools, and techniques enable teams across Apple Services Engineering to deliver features and product measurement while meeting the highest privacy standards. You and your team will represent and champion Apple's privacy values alongside Engineering, Security, Compliance, Legal, Product, and other functions, educating product teams, guiding them to privacy-preserving solutions, and providing tools they can build on. In this high-visibility role, you will serve as a privacy authority and trusted advisor to leadership across the company, shaping product decisions, driving organization‑wide privacy investments, and influencing programs that impact billions of users worldwide. As AI features grow rapidly, new privacy challenges emerge. You and your team will meet these challenges by working across disciplines to invent approaches that protect privacy on this new frontier. If you are energized by working at massive scale and turning privacy into an engine for innovation at one of the world's most influential companies, this role was made for you.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

• 15+ years of software development experience, including 5+ years leading engineering organizations with multiple layers of management and 3+ years in privacy leadership.
• Proven track record of recruiting, developing leadership talent, and building high-performing engineering cultures at scale.
• Deep expertise designing, building, and operating large-scale privacy systems, tools, and infrastructure, with strong instincts for technical excellence and software development best practices.
• Command of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) such as differential privacy, federated learning, on-device processing, tokenization, and data de-identification.
• Ability to shift seamlessly between deep technical details and big-picture strategy, with the judgment to know when each is required.
• Exceptional communication skills: able to drive clarity in ambiguity, distill complex concepts concisely, and engage stakeholders at all levels.
• Strong cross‑fostering... Actually it says "Strong cross-functional collaboration skills, with a track record of influencing outcomes across diverse organizations without direct authority. Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field"

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Proven ability to manage a broad set of stakeholders, balancing competing priorities and consistently delivering the systems and support each needs to succeed.
• Experience navigating privacy challenges specific to AI/ML, including training data governance and model inference privacy.
• Strong platform product sensibility: the ability to think holistically about developer experience, adoption, and business impact, not just technical or regulatory constraints.
• Experience developing privacy strategy collaboratively, balancing competing trade-offs, and influencing company‑wide technical direction.
• Track record of building privacy programs from the ground up and scaling their impact across large organizations.
• Strong understanding of privacy regulations, such as GDPR and CCPA.
• Experience leading geographically distributed engineering teams.
• Prior experience at a consumer technology company where privacy is treated as a product value, not just a compliance obligation.