Principal Data Protection Engineer

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Job Summary

The Digital Information Security Engineering team is seeking a highly experienced Principal Data Protection Engineer to lead the design, development, and automation of data protection capabilities embedded across enterprise platforms and services. This role focuses on protecting sensitive data throughout its lifecycle, enabling privacy-by-design architectures, and building developer-first APIs and AI-enabled solutions that integrate seamlessly into modern engineering workflows.

The ideal candidate is a hands-on technical leader with deep expertise in data protection, privacy engineering, and secure data architecture, combined with strong software development skills and a forward-looking mindset around AI, agentic agents, and autonomous systems.

Responsibilities

Data Protection & Privacy Engineering

• Design and implement data protection controls across data ingress, processing, storage, inference, and egress layers (e.g., classification, tokenization, encryption, masking, policy enforcement)

• Define and operationalize privacy-by-design and secure-by-default patterns for platforms, APIs, and AI-driven systems

• Evaluate and implement data governance, consent, residency, retention, and deletion mechanisms aligned with regulatory and enterprise requirements

• Analyze and assess data flows to identify privacy risks, data exposure paths, and compliance gaps

API & Platform Engineering

• Design, develop, and deliver high-quality, production-grade APIs that expose data protection and privacy capabilities as reusable services

• Own the API layer design, including authentication, authorization, schema design, rate limiting, observability, and security controls

• Research, select, and implement technologies for API gateways, service orchestration, and platform integration

• Ensure APIs meet published SLAs and SLOs, with built-in instrumentation and monitoring

Software Development & Automation

• Develop core services, tooling, and automation primarily using Python and Go (Golang).

• Build integrations, hooks, plugins, and pipelines that leverage data from security, privacy, and AI platforms

• Automate data protection workflows across CI/CD pipelines and cloud platforms

• Perform rigorous testing and validation to ensure reliability, scalability, and performance

AI, Agentic Systems & Emerging Technologies

• Evaluate and integrate AI and open-source technologies to enhance data protection, detection, and enforcement

• Design or contribute to agentic agents and autonomous workflows that make context-aware decisions about data use, access, and policy enforcement

• Partner with AI platform teams to address data protection challenges in model training, fine-tuning, inference, and RAG systems

• Research emerging trends in AI safety, privacy-preserving ML, and secure data sharing

Technical Leadership & Delivery

• Collaborate closely with Product Management and cross-functional engineering teams to translate requirements into technical solutions

• Anticipate architectural and delivery risks; proactively resolve or escalate technical roadblocks

• Own technical implementation end-to-end from design through production and operations

• Operate, support, and continuously improve data protection services in live environments

Leadership Characteristics

• Is a transformational leader who excels at driving bold and meaningful change at scale and across multiple dimensions

• Leads with a global mindset, across cultures, in a highly matrixed, relationship and consensus-driven environment

• Cultivates Innovation - ability to foresee potential security challenges and trends in the industry, and to develop strategies to address them

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Security, or a related field

• 10+ years of hands-on experience across data protection, security engineering, or privacy engineering

• Deep understanding of data protection technologies and practices, including encryption, key management, data classification, tokenization, anonymization, and access control

• Strong experience designing and delivering RESTful (and/or gRPC) APIs, including containerization, API gateways, service orchestration, and platform components

• Advanced programming expertise in Python and Go (additional languages are a plus)

• Experience performing threat modeling, data risk analysis, and privacy impact assessments

• Real-world experience with CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitHub Actions)

• Experience deploying and operating services on public cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) using Docker and Kubernetes

• Exposure to data analysis, machine learning, or AI systems, particularly where sensitive or regulated data is involved

Successful candidate will

• Be relentlessly driven, pragmatic, and outcome-focused

• Demonstrate a strong backbone-willing to challenge assumptions and raise the bar on data protection

• Exhibit high curiosity and stay current with privacy, data security, AI, and agentic system trends

• Show pride of ownership and strive for technical and operational excellence

• Thrive in a fast-paced, diverse, and constantly evolving environment

• Enjoy learning and applying new technologies and paradigms

The targeted pay range for this position in the following location is / locations are:

United States - Dallas Infomart Office DAI : 155,000 - 233,000 USD / Annual

Our pay ranges reflect the minimum and maximum target for new hire pay for the full-time position determined by role, level, and location.The pay range shown is based on our compensation structure in place at the time of posting and may be updated periodically based on business needs. Individual pay is based on additional factors including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education and/or training.

The targeted pay range listed reflects the base pay only and does not include bonus, equity, or benefits. Employees are eligible for bonus, and equity may be offered depending on the position.

Equinix Benefits

As an employee, you become important to Equinix's success. We ensure all your benefits are in line with our core values: competitive, inclusive, sustainable, connected and efficient. We keep them competitive within the current marketplace to ensure we're providing you with the best package possible. So, wherever you are in your career and life, you'll be able to enhance your experience and bring your whole self to work.

Employee Assistance Program: An Employee Assistance program is available to all employees.

Equinix is committed to ensuring that our employment process is open to all individuals, including those with a disability. If you are a qualified candidate and need assistance or an accommodation, please let us know by completing this form.

Equinix is an Equal Employment Opportunity and, in the U.S., an Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to unlawful consideration of race, color, religion, creed, national or ethnic origin, ancestry, place of birth, citizenship, sex, pregnancy / childbirth or related medical conditions, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital or domestic partnership status, age, veteran or military status, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, political / organizational affiliation, status as a victim or family member of a victim of crime or abuse, or any other status protected by applicable law.

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