Privacy Governance, Senior Manager

The Privacy Governance Senior Manager leads execution across Cox Automotive's privacy compliance program, with a primary focus on building and advancing the organization's privacy engineering capabilities. This role manages a team of privacy engineers responsible for consent management infrastructure, cookie governance, opt-out mechanisms, and privacy library maintenance, while also driving broader privacy compliance operations across the enterprise. The Senior Manager partners closely with Privacy Legal, Data strategy, Engineering, and Product stakeholders to ensure Cox Automotive's privacy practices are technically sound, operationally effective, and aligned with evolving regulatory requirements. A critical responsibility of this role is partnering closely with the broader privacy operations team to assess, onboard, and integrate brands and acquired entities into Cox Automotive's centralized privacy program and infrastructure. This role advances privacy-by-design principles by embedding technical oversight and compliance rigor into the technology development lifecycle and operates with a high degree of autonomy, making independent decisions and resolving cross-functional disputes in the best interest of Cox Automotive.
What You'll Do:
Privacy Engineering Leadership

• Lead and develop a team of privacy engineers, ensuring operational excellence and continuity across cookie categorization, cookie opt-out scanning, consent management platform (CMP) operations, and privacy library maintenance.
• Serve as the technical subject matter expert for the privacy engineering function, providing ideation, solution feedback, and architectural guidance to direct reports.
• Maintain sufficient technical depth across the team's domains to support continuity and reduce key-person risk.
• Oversee the maintenance and evolution of Cox Automotive's privacy technology stack, including consent management platforms, tag management systems, cookie scanning infrastructure, and personal data inventory tooling.
• Evaluate vendor capabilities and contribute technical perspective to privacy technology investment decisions and build/buy evaluations.
• Partner with Data Strategy and Engineering teams to integrate privacy-enhancing technologies into enterprise systems and development workflows.

Privacy Compliance Program Operations

• Execute and monitor privacy compliance activities across Cox Automotive, serving as a central subject matter expert partnering with federated teams across the enterprise.
• Support and advance privacy compliance initiatives on the privacy program roadmap, including but not limited to privacy risk assessments, data flow documentation, third-party privacy reviews, and regulatory compliance operations.
• Monitor privacy risk across the organization and ensure corrective actions are identified and tracked to resolution.
• Contribute to the development and maintenance of privacy program standards, processes, and documentation.

Brand and Acquisition Privacy Onboarding

• Partner with the broader privacy operations team to lead privacy onboarding for brands and acquired entities, including compliance assessments, gap identification, remediation planning, and integration into Cox Automotive's centralized privacy infrastructure.
• Evaluate the privacy posture of brands and acquisitions, assessing data practices, consent mechanisms, and regulatory compliance obligations against enterprise standards.
• Drive the technical integration of brands onto Cox Automotive's centralized consent management, opt-out, and privacy library infrastructure.
• Develop and execute onboarding playbooks that scale across acquisition types and brand structures.

Cross-Functional Partnership a nd Program Enablement

• Interface directly with Privacy Legal, Data Strategy, Engineering, and Product stakeholders to advance enterprise privacy program objectives.
• Serve as a trusted advisor on privacy-by-design principles for new products, features, and third-party integrations.
• Translate technical privacy concepts for non-technical audiences including legal, compliance, and executive stakeholders.
• Provide consultation to product and engineering teams on privacy requirements throughout the design and development lifecycle.
• Drive adoption of privacy standards through engagement, communication, and change management.
• Settle disputes between parties effectively and make decisions autonomously in the best interest of Cox Automotive without requiring escalation in the normal course of operations.

Who You Are:
Minimum Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in a related discipline and 8 years' experience in a related field. The right candidate could also have a different combination, such as a Master's degree and 6 years' experience; a Ph.D. and 3 years' experience; or 12 years' experience in a related field.
• Demonstrated experience operating within or leading a privacy compliance program.
• Working knowledge of U.S. state privacy regulations.
• Demonstrated experience with consent management platforms, cookie governance, and web tracking compliance operations.
• Technical understanding of web tracking technologies including tag management systems, cookie and pixel operations, and consent signal architecture.
• Strong cross-functional communication and influencing skills with demonstrated ability to align legal, engineering, product, and executive stakeholders.
• Strong program management skills with a track record of delivering in complex, matrixed organizations.
• 10%+ time travel requirement.

Preferred Qualifications

• IAPP certifications such as CIPP/US or CIPT (Certified Information Privacy Technologist).
• Direct people or program leadership experience.
• Hands-on experience with Consent Management Platforms.
• Familiarity with personal data inventory and discovery tooling.
• Familiarity with JavaScript, HTML, or tag management configuration in the context of consent signal deployment or privacy library implementation.
• Experience with adtech-related privacy operations across publisher, advertiser, and agency roles.
• Background in automotive industry, marketplace platforms, or large-scale digital consumer properties.

USD 122,600.00 - 204,400.00 per year
Compensation:
Compensation includes a base salary in the range of $122,600.00 - $204,400.00. The base salary may vary within the anticipated base pay range based on factors such as the ultimate location of the position and the selected candidate's knowledge, skills, and abilities. Position may be eligible for additional compensation that may include an incentive program.
Benefits:
The Company offers eligible employees the flexibility to take as much vacation with pay as they deem consistent with their duties, the company's needs, and its obligations; seven paid holidays throughout the calendar year; and up to 160 hours of paid wellness annually for their own wellness or that of family members. Employees are also eligible for additional paid time off in the form of bereavement leave, time off to vote, jury duty leave, volunteer time off, military leave, and parental leave.
Applicants must currently be authorized to work in the United States for any employer without current or future sponsorship.
EOE, including disability/vets