Sr. Lead Counsel, Privacy

About Pinterest

Millions of people across the world come to Pinterest to find new ideas every day. It’s where they get inspiration, dream about new possibilities and plan for what matters most. Our mission is to help those people find their inspiration and create a life they love. As a Pinterest employee, you’ll be challenged to take on work that upholds this mission and pushes Pinterest forward. You’ll grow as a person and leader in your field, all the while helping users make their lives better in the positive corner of the internet.

As Senior Privacy Counsel (EU), you will provide strategic, product-focused privacy counseling to help Pinterest design, build, and scale products in compliance with EU privacy requirements (including GDPR and ePrivacy). In this role, you’ll partner closely with cross-functional stakeholders—including Product, Engineering, Data, Security, Marketing, and other Legal teams—to embed privacy-by-design into the product lifecycle, guide high-impact launches, and help balance business goals with privacy compliance obligations. You’ll have the opportunity to shape and execute scalable privacy processes, including leading privacy risk assessments and supporting privacy governance across EU-facing products and features.

Our new progressive work model is called PinFlex, a term that’s uniquely Pinterest to describe our flexible approach to living and working. Visit our PinFlex landing page to learn more.

What you’ll do:

• Provide end-to-end privacy counseling, including to the Trust & Safety and Product teams on products, features, tools, and operations, from early design through launch and iteration. 
• Advise on global privacy and data protection issues arising in the Trust & Safety context, including platform abuse prevention, content moderation, user reporting, enforcement operations, account integrity, age assurance, identity-related signals, automated decision-making, and sensitive data handling. 
• Counsel on key legal and regulatory privacy and privacy adjacent frameworks including EU GDPR, ePrivacy, UK GDPR, CCPA, UK Children’s Code, California AADC, and other global privacy laws, with familiarity in adjacent issues involving online safety, transparency, and accountability. 
• Lead and support privacy risk assessments, including DPIAs where applicable, and drive practical mitigations in partnership with cross-functional stakeholders. 
• Partner closely with Trust & Safety, Product, Engineering, Security, Regulatory, and other Legal teams to operationalize privacy-by-design in systems, workflows, and investigations. 
• Support development of scalable governance frameworks, review processes, templates, and playbooks to enable efficient and consistent privacy review. 
• Provide guidance on third-party and vendor arrangements, including privacy terms, data protection requirements, and data sharing considerations. 
• Advise on international data transfers for cross-border data flows, partnering with internal stakeholders and outside counsel where appropriate to support compliant transfer mechanisms and risk mitigations.
• Develop and improve scalable privacy workflows, templates, and playbooks to enable consistent, efficient privacy review across multiple teams and roadmaps.
• Collaborate with cross-functional partners and Legal colleagues to address privacy issues that arise from incidents, complaints, or escalations, regulatory inquiries, and internal investigations, and help drive durable process improvements.
• Leverage AI-enabled tools thoughtfully and responsibly to improve the efficiency and consistency of privacy counseling and program workflows, while maintaining appropriate legal oversight and quality control.

What we’re looking for:

• Qualified to practice law in the jurisdiction where you reside with a minimum of 10 years of experience.
• Demonstrated experience providing privacy counseling in a fast-paced environment to Trust & Safety and Product teams, with the ability to translate legal requirements into clear, practical guidance for business, product, and technical teams. 
• Experience leading or materially supporting DPIAs/privacy risk assessments, and driving cross-functional mitigations to enable launches while managing risk.
• Experience with privacy product counseling on ads in the tech sector, as well as advising on commercial matters, including reviewing, drafting, and negotiating data processing agreements (DPAs) and advising on related data protection terms, a significant plus. 
• Excellent judgment, strong ownership, and the ability to operate independently on sensitive and high-stakes matters. 
• Strong written, verbal, and interpersonal communication skills, with the ability to influence and build alignment across cross-functional teams.
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple projects and competing priorities with independence, sound judgment, and attention to detail, and a practical, solutions-oriented approach.
• Demonstrated ability to use AI and other technology tools effectively and responsibly and identify practical opportunities to improve effectiveness, or willingness to learn.
• Experience navigating complex, multi-jurisdictional legal and compliance issues for a technology company or similarly dynamic environment preferred.
• Familiarity with international data transfer mechanisms (e.g., SCCs and transfer risk assessments) preferred.

Relocation Statement:

•  This position is not eligible for relocation assistance. Visit our PinFlex page to learn more about our working model.

In-Office Requirement Statement:

• We recognize that the ideal environment for work is situational and may differ across departments. What this looks like day-to-day can vary based on the needs of each organization or role.
• This role will need to be in the office for in-person collaboration 1-2 times every 6 months and therefore can be situated anywhere in the country.

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