Tech businesses increasingly need privacy professionals who can connect regulatory requirements to real products, data flows and automated systems. But the evidence points to a skills and capacity challenge—not proof that privacy hiring is rising everywhere. Employers can respond by defining the work precisely, assessing technical capability alongside regulatory knowledge, and building skills internally where that fits their needs.
What is changing in privacy hiring?
Privacy work is becoming more cross-functional. A data protection professional may need to advise on regulatory obligations while understanding how a product collects data, how applications use it, and where a decision-making system creates risk. The right balance depends on the employer’s products, systems, markets and responsibilities; the evidence does not establish that every company needs a dedicated privacy engineer.
ISACA’s 2026 State of Privacy survey summary identifies technical expertise and experience with different technologies or applications among the leading privacy skills gaps. NIST’s Privacy Workforce Taxonomy offers a way to describe the work through tasks, knowledge and skills, rather than relying on a broad job label such as “privacy expert.” ISACA’s survey findings and NIST’s taxonomy serve different purposes: one reports respondent views, while the other is a flexible resource for workforce planning.
AI is adding to the DPO remit
AI adoption brings privacy questions into product and operational decisions, while the EU AI Act adds another body of rules for relevant organizations to understand. In a 2025 study by the French DPO Observatory, summarized by France’s CNIL in 2026, 27% of DPOs said they had a good level of knowledge of the AI Act. That is a finding about the French study’s respondents, not a global estimate of DPO knowledge.
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The result illustrates a training and capability issue as well as a hiring question: employers need to determine which AI-related tasks their privacy function must handle, what knowledge those tasks require, and who can provide it. Depending on the organization, that capability may sit in a DPO role, a broader privacy team, or a collaboration with legal, engineering and other specialists. CNIL’s announcement of the DPO Observatory study describes the research in the French context.
Skills gaps exist alongside pressure on team capacity
ISACA’s 2026 survey drew on more than 1,800 privacy professionals globally. Its summary reports a median privacy team size of five, down from eight a year earlier. Respondents also identified gaps in technical expertise and experience with technologies or applications, while 47% said their technical privacy teams were understaffed.
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| ISACA 2026 survey finding | Reported result |
|---|---|
| Median privacy team size | Five, compared with eight a year earlier |
| Respondents identifying technical expertise as a privacy skills gap | 54% |
| Respondents identifying experience with different technologies or applications as a gap | 52% |
| Respondents saying technical privacy teams were understaffed | 47% |
These are survey findings, not counts of open vacancies or evidence that hiring is accelerating across technology businesses. ISACA reports that respondents most often recommended training nonprivacy staff to move into privacy work as a response to skills gaps. Internal mobility can therefore be one option alongside external recruitment, depending on the skills needed and the capacity available to train people.
Adjacent UK cyber-sector evidence also needs careful interpretation. In the UK government’s 2026 survey, 11% of 113 cyber security businesses that identified technical employee or applicant skills gaps cited data protection and privacy. That is not a privacy-only vacancy rate. Among 66 cyber security businesses reporting hard-to-fill vacancies in the prior 18 months, 56% said experienced or senior staff with around three to five years’ experience were difficult to recruit, and 35% said the same of principal-level staff with around six to nine years’ experience. Those figures concern cyber security businesses, not all tech employers or privacy openings. The UK government report provides context on that adjacent labour market, rather than a measure of privacy hiring overall.
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Automated recruitment creates privacy work of its own
Recruitment tools that use automation process candidate information and may influence decisions about people. That makes the employer’s own hiring process a privacy and governance concern, not just a way to source talent. The ICO says, “Automated recruitment tools have a role to play in helping candidates and employers alike.” Its 2026 findings focus on the UK and draw on evidence from more than 30 employers that voluntarily spoke with the regulator between March 2025 and January 2026.
The ICO highlights three practical areas for employers using automated recruitment:
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- Be transparent with candidates. Explain relevant automated decision-making and how candidate information is used.
- Apply human involvement consistently. Where the employer relies on meaningful human involvement, ensure it is applied consistently to candidates at the relevant stage.
- Monitor fairness and bias. Improve monitoring of recruitment systems and their outcomes.
The ICO also says some solely automated recruitment decisions with legal or similarly significant effects fall within UK GDPR provisions on solely automated decision-making. This is a UK-specific point, and its application depends on the decision and circumstances. The ICO’s Recruitment Rewired report sets out its findings and recommendations.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How to define the role your business needs
NIST’s Privacy Workforce Taxonomy organizes task, knowledge and skill statements that can support job descriptions, recruitment, workforce assessment, education and professional development. NIST describes it as voluntary, modular, and neutral with respect to law, sector and technology. It is not a universal checklist: employers should select what fits their own context.
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Before writing a job description or choosing between an internal hire, specialist and external support, pin down these dimensions:
- Work to own: Specify whether the role leads governance and advice, technical implementation, risk assessment, incident handling, oversight of automated decisions, or a defined mix.
- Technical depth: Identify the data flows, systems, products and applications the person must understand or work with. Ask for experience relevant to those systems rather than treating “technical” as a vague requirement.
- Regulatory scope: Name the jurisdictions and regimes relevant to the business, and clarify who is responsible for advice and escalation.
- Seniority and operating model: Decide whether the need is for a senior specialist, a developing internal capability, or temporary or outsourced support.
- Decision rights and independence: Define how the person can raise risks and influence decisions across product, engineering, legal, security, HR and leadership.
These are practical comparison questions, not a formal NIST checklist. They help make clear whether a generalist privacy professional can cover the remit, whether deeper technical expertise is needed, or whether work should be shared with other teams.
Write a job description around observable work
A useful privacy job description connects responsibilities to the employer’s actual environment. Instead of asking for an all-purpose “privacy expert,” describe the decisions and systems the hire will support, the knowledge needed to do that work, and how success will be assessed.
- List the work. Identify the concrete tasks the role will own, such as advising product teams, assessing data practices, supporting incident response or reviewing automated recruitment processes.
- Map required knowledge and skills. Separate regulatory understanding from technical experience, and state which is essential for the role’s scope.
- Name the collaborators. Show how the role works with engineering, product, legal, security, HR and leadership, as relevant.
- Set boundaries and escalation routes. Clarify decision authority, reporting lines and when issues must be escalated.
- Consider development as well as hiring. Where a skills gap can be addressed through training or internal movement, weigh that route against recruiting an experienced specialist.
This approach makes the requirements more useful to candidates and hiring teams, while leaving room to tailor the role to the organization’s technology, jurisdictions and risk profile. NIST’s taxonomy can help structure that description without dictating a single profile.
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