Senior Privacy Engineer

Role Description

The Security team at Asana is responsible for protecting Asana’s employees, users, and customers. We build innovative safeguards to ensure that our data is protected against threats and that we comply with legal, regulatory, and customer requirements while collaborating closely with teams across the organization. Reporting to Asana’s Head of Global Privacy, Data Protection, and Compliance, as a founding member of the Privacy Engineering team, you will shape how we build privacy into our products from the ground up—bridging the legal, regulatory, and technical dimensions of privacy across the company.

This role can either be fully remote depending on which US state you live in, or based in our San Francisco office with an office-centric hybrid schedule. If based in-office:

• The standard in-office days are Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday.
• Most Asanas have the option to work from home on Wednesdays.
• Working from home on Fridays depends on the type of work you do and the teams with which you partner.

If you're interviewing for this role, your recruiter will share more about the in-office requirements.

What you’ll achieve

• Lead technical privacy-by-design reviews for new features and major architectural changes, embedding privacy controls early in the development lifecycle across our business, data, and product infrastructure.
• Help drive compliance with global privacy regulations (such as GDPR and CCPA) by translating legal requirements into concrete engineering standards, frameworks, and tooling that facilitate velocity.
• Evaluate and mitigate privacy risks in AI/ML systems, including training data pipelines and model outputs.
• Build and operate systems that enable data rights for our users and privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), such as data minimization and de-identification frameworks.
• Conduct privacy impact assessments and threat modeling for high-risk data processing activities.
• Advocate for privacy-preserving solutions, serve as a trusted technical advisor across the business, and identify new opportunities to improve our overall privacy posture.
• Partner cross-functionally to ensure our privacy policies and notices accurately reflect our underlying technology.
• Develop customer-facing trust documentation on privacy and support privacy incident response efforts.
• Design and implement privacy-preserving analytics and measurement systems that provide actionable insights while protecting individual user privacy.

Qualifications

• Demonstrates curiosity about AI tools and emerging technologies, with a willingness to learn and leverage them to enhance productivity, collaboration, or decision-making.
• 6+ years of software engineering experience, with 3+ years focused on privacy or data protection.
• Passion for privacy and data protection with a deep understanding of GDPR, CCPA, and emerging global privacy frameworks.
• Proven experience building technical controls for data governance, including classification, lineage, retention, and deletion at scale.
• Familiarity with privacy risks in ML systems, such as training data sourcing, model memorization, and inference privacy.
• Strong foundation in privacy-by-design principles and hands-on experience applying them throughout product development.
• Demonstrated ability to translate complex regulatory and legal requirements into clear engineering specifications.
• Experience with cryptographic techniques, anonymization, and de-identification frameworks.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with a track record of partnering effectively with legal, policy, and non-technical stakeholders.

Benefits

• Mental health, wellness & fitness benefits.
• Career coaching & support.
• Inclusive family building benefits.
• Long-term savings or retirement plans.
• In-office culinary options to cater to your dietary preferences.