Director, Trust and Safety, Policy Principles and Strategy

Google; Seattle (WA); Hybrid; USD 264,000 - 366,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, vision insurance

401(k) with company match

Paid time off

Sick time

Maternity leave

Baby Bonding Leave

13 paid holidays

Job summary

Google is seeking a Director of Trust & Safety to lead a global policy team. You will develop cross‑product policies spanning Search, Geo, AI, Workspace, Play, and Ads, while guiding governance frameworks and risk management. The role requires strategic leadership and collaboration with cross‑functional stakeholders.

You will manage a global policy portfolio, engage with leaders, and drive alignment on high‑stakes topics, ensuring strong user safety and product integrity across Google services.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 15 years of professional experience in policy, risk governance, legal, or trust and safety leadership.
• Experience leading global teams and managing people managers.

Responsibilities

• Lead policy principles, strategies, and frameworks across AI models and digital experiences.
• Drive proactive policy positioning across harm spectrums and establish ownership for risk areas.
• Ensure policy explainability and rationalization across products for enforcement teams.
• Collaborate with cross-functional leaders to reach principled decisions on complex abuse areas.
• Oversee governance accuracy for a global team and deliver risk insights to leadership.

Skills

Policy leadership

Global team leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Risk governance

Policy strategy

Education

Bachelor's degree in Public Policy, Law, International Relations, Business

Master's or PhD in related field

Job description

Applicants in San Francisco: Qualified applications with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act.

In accordance with Washington state law, we are highlighting our comprehensive benefits package, which is available to all eligible US based employees. Benefits for this role include:

• Health, dental, vision, life, disability insurance
• Retirement Benefits: 401(k) with company match
• Paid Time Off: 20 days of vacation per year, accruing at a rate of 6.15 hours per pay period for the first five years of employment
• Sick Time: 40 hours/year (increased to 69 hours/year for Seattle) including 5 discretionary sick days per instance
• Maternity Leave (Short-Term Disability + Baby Bonding): 28-30 weeks
• Baby Bonding Leave: 18 weeks
• Holidays: 13 paid days per year

Note: By applying to this position you will have an opportunity to share your preferred working location from the following: Sunnyvale, CA, USA; Atlanta, GA, USA; Austin, TX, USA; Kirkland, WA, USA; Seattle, WA, USA; San Francisco, CA, USA.

Minimum qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Public Policy, Law, International Relations, Business, or equivalent practical experience.
• 15 years of professional experience in policy, risk governance, legal, or trust and safety leadership.
• Experience leading global teams, working across multiple regions, and managing people managers.

Preferred qualifications

• Master's degree or PhD in a related field.
• Experience applying systems thinking to complex policy problems and guiding organizational design through periods of change.
• Experience in policy strategy, technology policy governance, and risk framework design within a global technology platform.
• Experience collaborating with and influencing VP and executive-level cross-functional stakeholders.
• Knowledge of the global regulatory, policy, and safety landscape affecting online platforms.

About The Job

Google's brand is only as strong as our users' trust—and their steadfast belief that our guiding principles are what's best for them. Our Trust and Safety team has the critical responsibility of protecting Google's users by ensuring online safety by fighting web abuse and fraud across Google products like Search, Maps, AdWords and AdSense. On this team, you're a big-picture thinker and strategic leader. You understand the user's point of view and are passionate about using your combined technical, sales and customer service acumen to protect our users. You work globally and cross-functionally with Google developers and Product Managers to navigate challenging online safety situations and handle abuse and fraud cases at Google speed (read: fast!). Help us prove that quality on the Internet trumps all.

As the Director, you will lead a global team of policy specialists and oversee a critical portfolio that includes policy to protect users from harm in a variety of areas. You will develop policies that affect a broad range of products, from Google Search, Geo, and AI products, to Workspace and Enterprise, to Google Play and Devices, to Ads and YouTube. You will evaluate these complex product areas and analyze different trust and safety issues to develop cross-product policy signals and governance frameworks.

In this role, you will provide policy leadership in critical risk areas, drive governance of the full cross-product policy catalog, and engage across multiple teams and expert communities on collaborative approaches to problem solving. You will build and maintain influential relationships with cross-functional leadership groups, driving executive alignment on complex, high-stakes policy topics.

At Google we work hard to earn our users’ trust every day. Gaining and retaining this trust is critically important to Google’s success. We defend Google's integrity by fighting spam, fraud and abuse, and develop and communicate state-of-the-art product policies. The Trust and Safety team reduces risk and protects the experience of our users and business partners in more than 40 languages and across Google’s expanding base of products. We work with a variety of teams from Engineering to Legal, Public Policy and Sales Engineering to set policies and combat fraud and abuse in a scalable way, often with an eye to finding industry-wide solutions. Trust and Safety team members are motivated to find innovative solutions, and use technical know-how, user insights and proactive communication to pursue the highest possible quality and safety standards for users across Google products.

Individual pay is determined by factors including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

US: $264000 - $366000 (USD) + 30% bonus target + equity + benefits

Responsibilities

• Lead coherent policy principles, strategies, and frameworks that balance user and product needs across evolving AI models and digital experiences.
• Drive proactive policy positioning across harm spectrums, establishing clear ownership and domain expertise for complex and emerging risk areas.
• Ensure policy explainability and rationalization across products, enabling enforcement teams to translate high-level principles into actionable operational guidelines.
• Collaborate with and influence cross-functional leaders to reach principled decisions on complex abuse areas, integrating global internal and external insights.
• Oversee operational and governance accuracy for a global team, delivering consolidated risk and mitigation insights to trust & safety executive leadership.

Google is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. See also Google's EEO Policy and EEO is the Law. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know by completing our Accommodations for Applicants form.