Staff Software Engineer, Privacy Engineering

Location: Netherlands

Department: Core Tech Engineering

Discord is on a mission to create space for everyone to find belonging. Trusted by millions of people to keep their communications private and out of the hands of evildoers, Security and Privacy are necessary to Discord's success.

We're looking for a Staff Privacy Engineer to join us in Amsterdam and shape how we build privacy into our products and operations. If you pair deep privacy technology and compliance fluency with a builder's instinct for automation and system design, read on!

What you will do:

• Lead and deliver the roadmap for the Privacy Engineering Amsterdam team: define priorities, scope multi-quarter initiatives, and drive them to completion across engineering, product, and legal stakeholders.Drive collaboration and advisement with engineering teams across Lisbon and Amsterdam, acting as the senior privacy voice in architecture reviews, product design, and incident response for our European engineering hubs.
• Partner with cross-functional teams, including Engineering, Product, Data, and Legal to conduct privacy impact assessments, code and architecture reviews, and ensure compliance with Discord's Privacy Principles and regulatory requirements.
• Develop actionable data privacy policies and drive the creation and monitoring of controls that ensure adherence, grounding Discord's privacy posture in industry frameworks.
• Design privacy-preserving product solutions, act as the privacy subject matter expert for the region, and identify new opportunities to advance our privacy posture.
• Lead privacy impact analysis on production incidents, direct technical validation of remediations and external responses, and raise the bar for how the team operates.
• Shape and scale our central privacy systems: from evidencing automation to data subject rights fulfillment, you will use your technical skills, privacy expertise, and AI tooling chops to multiply the team's impact — and mentor other engineers to do the same.

What you have:

• A passion for user privacy and data protection.
• 7+ years of experience in technical privacy, data protection, or adjacent engineering roles, including experience leading significant privacy initiatives end-to-end. Example projects could include implementing Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs), data classification and discovery, and developing data subject rights systems.
• A track record of owning and delivering a technical roadmap: translating regulatory and business requirements into a prioritized plan, and landing it across multiple teams.
• Deep operational and technical fluency with GDPR, and strong command of the broader privacy compliance landscape (CPRA/CPPA, EU AI Act, etc).
• Experience automating privacy compliance at scale, such as the development of DPIAs, maintaining data maps and records of processing (RoPA), and assessing vendor/processor risk.
• Ability to automate evidence collection and program workflows (e.g. Python and AI tooling), and the architecture fluency to evaluate privacy risks and design mitigations in complex distributed systems.
• Outstanding written communication and demonstrated ability to influence senior stakeholders across Engineering, Product, and Legal — including driving alignment across offices and time zones. Occasional virtual meetings with employees in US timezones may be necessary.
• Fluent English required.

Bonus Points:

• Experience leading privacy incident response and regulator engagement.
• Experience mentoring or leading privacy or security engineers.
• Familiarity with privacy tooling (e.g. OneTrust, BigID, TrustArc).
• Exposure to AI governance and the EU AI Act.
• Experience working across EU and US time zones.
• Hands-on experience building and monitoring a privacy or security control framework (e.g. ISO 27701, ISO 27001, or NIST Privacy Framework).

The base salary range for this full-time position is €128,000 to €160,000 + equity + benefits. Our salary ranges are determined by role and level. Within the range, individual pay is determined by additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. Please note that the compensation details listed in NL role postings reflect the base salary only, and do not include equity, or benefits.

Candidates must reside in or be willing to relocate to the Amsterdam, NL Area and attend the office 1-2 days a week.