Engineer privacy-preserving identity systems for Netflix's ad platform

This role on Netflix's Ads Identity and Audiences team focuses on privacy-by-design engineering for the ad-supported tier — building data minimization, encryption, and deidentification into large-scale identity systems while staying compliant with GDPR/CCPA/CPRA. It's a privacy-specialist software engineering role, not a general backend role, sitting at the intersection of big data (Spark-scale) and regulatory compliance.

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What this interview tests

Privacy-by-design: data minimization, encryption, deidentification
Regulatory compliance engineering (GDPR, CCPA, CPRA)
Large-scale distributed identity systems (Spark-scale big data)
Privacy Enhancing Technologies and Consent Management Platform integration
Balancing ad targeting needs against privacy constraints

Common question themes

Design a privacy-preserving identity system for an ad platform

How have you implemented data minimization or deidentification in production

Translating GDPR/CCPA/CPRA requirements into concrete engineering decisions

Building high-throughput, low-latency systems on large-scale data (e.g., Spark)

Experience with Privacy Enhancing Technologies or Consent Management Platforms

How candidates describe it

Real Software Engineer 5 - Ads Identity & Privacy interview stories — retold from candidates' public write-ups, with sources.

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