Senior Director Engineering, YouTube Trust and Safety

Google LLC; San Bruno (CA); On-site; USD 364,000 - 505,000; Full time

Job summary

Google LLC is seeking a Senior Director of Engineering for YouTube Trust and Safety, overseeing Detection Engineering across multiple sites. You will lead ~200 engineers, driving AI/ML strategy, incident response, and scalable safety solutions.

This role requires deep technical depth, leadership, and the ability to align engineering with business risk and trust objectives. You will partner with stakeholders across YouTube, DeepMind, and Google Trust & Safety to ensure rigorous frameworks and

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in CS or equivalent practical experience is required.
• 15 years of software development experience.
• 10 years of team management experience.
• Experience with consumer-facing product engineering or ML/recommendations organizations.

Responsibilities

• Manage, grow, and inspire a global organization of around 200 software engineers across all aspects of the software stack.
• Set and drive the big-picture strategy while providing detailed technical guidance on AI/ML and infrastructure.
• Oversee complex projects including GenAI model integration and multimodal classification model evolution.
• Handle urgent escalations and high-priority incidents, solving problems under pressure.

Skills

Software development

Team management

ML / AI

Consumer-facing product engineering

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience

Job description

Senior Director Engineering, YouTube Trust and Safety

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.
• 15 years of experience in software development.
• 10 years of experience in team management.
• Experience with consumer-facing product engineering or ML/recommendations organizations.

Preferred qualifications:

• 20 years of experience in software development spanning a combination of infrastructure, mobile and web applications, and AI/ML.
• Experience driving execution with urgency.
• Experience in music, podcasts, or video streaming services.
• Experience handling incidents and escalations, highly skilled in problem solving under pressure and executions against deadlines.
• Ability to inspire and motivate the engineering team to work together as a cohesive and highly productive unit.

About the job

This role focuses on Detection Engineering and comprises approximately 200 software engineers across Zurich, San Bruno, and Mountain View.

The organization comprises two primary pillars:

Video Content Abuse: Focuses on detecting violative video content on the platform. The team (comprising ~90 engineers) leverages advanced ML architectures (such as multimodal representation topologies) and agentic workflows to increase recall and precision for video abuse classification.

Channel Abuse and GenAI Product Safety: Focuses on detecting violative channels, text abuse and securing Generative AI features via the YouTube Safety API (1pGenAI Safety). The team builds classifiers, automated prompt optimization frameworks, and multimodal protections to defend against adversarial creators and abuses such as hate speech, and harassment in text inputs and outputs. The team also builds APIs called by YouTube’s GenAI features to ensure the safety of the output.

As the Senior Director of Engineering for Trust and Safety, you will be responsible for end-to-end technical leadership and execution for the YouTube Trust & Safety’s Detection Engineering teams. In particular, you are responsible for making sure that Violative View Rate (VVR) and Adversarial View Rate (AVR) meet targets under the constraints that annual trust and safety operating expense are under budget.

At YouTube, we believe that everyone deserves to have a voice, and that the world is a better place when we listen, share, and build community through our stories. We work together to give everyone the power to share their story, explore what they love, and connect with one another in the process. Working at the intersection of cutting-edge technology and boundless creativity, we move at the speed of culture with a shared goal to show people the world. We explore new ideas, solve real problems, and have fun — and we do it all together.

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

US: $364000 - $505000 (USD) + 40% bonus target + equity + benefits

• Manage, grow, and inspire a global organization of around 200 software engineers across all aspects of the software stack. Develop leadership talent through effective mentoring, succession planning, and retention strategies.
• Set and drive the "big picture" strategy while providing detailed technical guidance on AI/ML and infrastructure. Oversee complex technical projects including the integration of GenAI models, the evolution of multimodal classification models, and first-party GenAI feature safety.
• Partner with internal stakeholders across YouTube, DeepMind, and Google Trust & Safety to design and deploy rigorous quantitative frameworks and scalable enforcement solutions.
• Handle urgent escalations and high-priority incidents, demonstrating high EQ and the technical depth to uncover root causes and solve complex problems under pressure.

Google is proud to be an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. We are committed to building a workforce that is representative of the users we serve, creating a culture of belonging, and providing an equal employment opportunity regardless of race, creed, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition (including breastfeeding), expecting or parents-to-be, criminal histories consistent with legal requirements, or any other basis protected by law. See also Google's EEO Policy , Know your rights: workplace discrimination is illegal , Belonging at Google , and How we hire .

Google is a global company and, in order to facilitate efficient collaboration and communication globally, English proficiency is a requirement for all roles unless stated otherwise in the job posting.

Equity is granted exclusively and discretionarily by Alphabet Inc. on the basis of an agreement concluded between you and Alphabet Inc. Alphabet Inc. is your sole contractual partner with respect to equity grants. GSU grants are not guaranteed, are discretionary, are subject to approval by the Alphabet Inc. board of directors or its delegate, the terms of the relevant Alphabet Inc. stock plan, and your grant agreement. They have no impact on statutory payments. Current or past grants do not confer an acquired right.