Safety Policy Lead, Youth Safety

Discord•Los Angeles, CA

1d•Onsite

About The Position

Discord is seeking an experienced Safety Policy Lead to own its youth safety policy portfolio. This role is part of the Product Policy team and will drive policy development and lifecycle management for youth safety harms, including child sexual abuse material, grooming, and child exploitation. The position requires deep domain expertise, strong regulatory literacy, and the ability to translate complex child safety requirements into enforceable policy and durable implementation. This is a lifecycle ownership role, accountable for policy quality from problem identification through enforcement quality, with visibility into implementation, QA, and feedback loops. The role involves regular exposure to potentially disturbing content, including child sexual abuse material, exploitation imagery, and grooming-related content, with wellness support provided.

Requirements

5 or more years of experience in trust and safety, policy development, or child safety roles at a technology platform or civil society organization focused on child protection.
Deep expertise in youth safety: CSAM, NCMEC/ICAC frameworks, CSAM hash-matching systems, grooming and solicitation patterns, age assurance methodologies, and the regulatory landscape governing minors online.
Direct experience with KOSA, COPPA, DSA child safety provisions, and/or the Online Safety Act. Regulatory literacy is required, not a bonus.
Proven ability to write policy that survives implementation: clear enforcement criteria, defined classification hierarchies, and usable edge case guidance.
Experience working with ML and automation teams to translate policy criteria into detection signals. You do not need to write the model, but you need to know what the model needs from you.
Comfort making decisions under ambiguity and pressure.
Strong written and verbal communication for audiences ranging from frontline moderators to regulators to executive leadership.
Bachelor's degree or equivalent professional experience.
Candidates must reside in or be willing to relocate to Los Angeles.

Nice To Haves

Advanced degree in law, public policy, child development, psychology, or a related field.
Experience with Discord's platform or gaming and creator communities.
Multilingual capabilities, particularly in languages relevant to Discord's global user base

Responsibilities

Research and develop safety policies governing youth safety harms on Discord, including CSAM, grooming and solicitation, child exploitation, and age assurance, covering both reactive harm response and proactive age-appropriate design.
Own the full policy lifecycle for your domain: problem scoping, data justification, structured XFN consultation, testing against enforcement criteria, and post-launch feedback loop management.
Partner with Legal early in the development process.
Embed compliance requirements for KOSA, COPPA, DSA Article 28, and the Online Safety Act into policy design before drafting begins.
Co-develop enforcement infrastructure with Trust and Safety, Engineering, and ML teams, including golden datasets, classification hierarchies, ML signal specifications, and IKB anchor criteria.
Own the feedback loop from implementation and QA back to your policy work. When QA findings or overturn data indicate a policy gap, you drive the revision.
Collaborate with civil society, NCMEC, ICAC, and other external child safety organizations.
Represent Discord externally in this domain with credibility and consistency.
Deliver rapid policy responses to emerging child safety threats, including cross-functional coordination during incidents and regulatory notifications where applicable.
Own at least one functional domain area for the Safety Policy team beyond your harm portfolio. Current team needs include policy implementation systems, AI/LLM governance, or safety-by-design frameworks.