Privacy and Compliance Program Manager

About Handshake

Handshake is building the career network for the AI economy, backed by the largest and most trusted job network on the internet. As the only three-sided job marketplace connecting 18 million knowledge workers, 1,500 educational institutions, and 1 million employers, Handshake powers career discovery, hiring, and upskilling—from first internships to full-time roles, freelance work to gig work, and beyond.

Founded in 2014, we’ve built the most trusted platform for early talent—owning the college-to-career market and powering nearly every career center. Today we’re building on that foundation to help students and early professionals upskill or reskill for the future.

Now’s a great time to join Handshake. Here’s why:

• Category Leader: Over 92% coverage across US universities & 77% of total US university student population.

• Proven Market Demand: Deep employer partnerships across Fortune 500s and the world’s leading AI research labs.

• World-Class Team: Leadership from Scale AI, Open AI, xAI, Notion, Coinbase, and Palantir, just to name a few.

• Capitalized & Scaling: $434M raised with a $175M+ run rate.

About the Role

The Privacy and Compliance Program Manager plays a critical role in earning and maintaining the trust of our students, fellow, employers, and university partners worldwide. You will help design, operationalize, and scale our global privacy and data protection program, balancing regulatory compliance with business innovation and user experience. The Privacy and Compliance Program Manager will be a member of Handshake’s Legal team.

Privacy Operations is a core part of Handshake’s Global Privacy Program, helping to ensure Handshake’s compliance with all privacy regulations that apply to our business world-wide.

The successful candidate flourishes in a fast-paced, ambiguous and collaborative environment and is excited to solve complex problems.

• Manage privacy-driven programs end to end to ensure regulatory readiness and compliance with global privacy and data protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, LGPD and other privacy regulations.

• Leverage deep privacy expertise to collaborate with Product, Security, and other cross-functional partners to identify, assess, and mitigate privacy risks across systems and processes.

• Lead vendor privacy reviews and support broader third-party risk management initiatives.

• Develop and maintain processes for data subject rights requests and cookie compliance.

• Conduct and oversee Privacy Impact Assessments and Data Protection Impact Assessments.

• Continuously improve user-facing workflows to ensure operational streamlining for existing and new privacy laws and regulations.

• Create and maintain internal and external documentation to provide scalable privacy support and resources.

• Support Handshake’s Compliance & Ethics Program, including AI governance, policy governance, training, monitoring activities, and third-party risk management.

• Prepare periodic reports for leadership on program effectiveness and key risk indicators.

• Be a strong advocate for a privacy mindset while working with product, engineering, and other internal teams.

Desired Capabilities

• Bachelor’s degree

• Has 5+ years of demonstrated project management skills and a proven track record for operationalizing and scaling cross-functional organization-wide programs from the ground up in the privacy domain (GDPR, CCPA, LGPD and other privacy regulations).

• Has excellent collaboration, communication, and relationship building skills and the ability to convey complex ideas succinctly to all audiences.

• Has an analytical approach to decision-making. You are meticulous, objective and skilled at using metrics to drive decisions.

• Has strong research skills; able to analyze complex problems in order to identify root cause and trends; able to document complex narratives in a simplified way which are easy for others to use.

• Is confident making decisive judgement calls in the absence of fully complete information.

• Is comfortable working independently and collaborating with a distributed team.

• Is passionate about safeguarding student data while supporting seamless user experiences across our platform.

• Experience in a regulated industry or high-growth technology company.

• Familiarity with AI governance and emerging privacy standards related to machine learning and data ethics.

Extra Credit

• CIPP, CIPM, or similar privacy certification.

Perks

Handshake delivers benefits that help you feel supported—and thrive at work and in life.

The below benefits are for full-time US employees.

🎯 Ownership: Equity in a fast-growing company

💰 Financial Wellness: 401(k) match, competitive compensation, financial coaching

🍼 Family Support: Paid parental leave, fertility benefits, parental coaching

💝 Wellbeing: Medical, dental, and vision, mental health support, $500 wellness stipend

📚 Growth: $2,000 learning stipend, ongoing development

💻 Remote & Office: Internet, commuting, and free lunch/gym in our SF office

🏝 Time Off: Flexible PTO, 15 holidays + 2 flex days, winter #ShakeBreak where our whole office closes for a week!

🤝 Connection: Team outings & referral bonuses

Explore our mission, values, and comprehensive US benefits at joinhandshake.com/careers.