Building Privacy and Security Engineering Teams
2025.09 - What shape do world class privacy and security engineering teams take? Is there a one size fit all? The answer is lies with your companies growth stage.
Summary: Privacy and security engineering must scale alongside the business, and TPMs play a key role in making that happen.
✅ In early-stage startups, a single security/privacy engineer is sufficient
✅ As companies grow, teams split into specialized roles
✅ When companies scale, embedding privacy/security engineers in product teams becomes necessary
✅ Big tech companies operate hybrid models, balancing centralized oversight with decentralized execution
The power of TPMs is our breadth of knowledge and experience that can be leveraged to inform when organizations are ready for what structure. This is a personal belief that I hold to strongly.
As a Technical Program Manager (TPM), your role is more than just managing projects and shipping complex programs. You are in a unique position to enable organizational efficiency—helping engineering and product leaders structure and scale teams effectively.
Privacy and security engineering is a critical component of any organization and a place where TPMs can have a huge impact. These functions are not just compliance checkboxes; they are foundational to user trust, regulatory success, and business continuity. However, how companies structure these teams evolves with size and complexity.
A startup with a single product will approach privacy and security differently than a scaled-up platform company like Google or Amazon. The needs stay constant—security and privacy are always must-haves—but the way they are implemented, staffed, and integrated into the business changes.
This post explores how privacy and security engineering teams can be structured at different stages of company growth, the pros and cons of each model, and the best practices used by industry leaders such as Apple, Google, Meta, Shopify, and Amazon.
How Company Size Affects Privacy & Security Team Structure
Every company goes through a standard growth trajectory—startup, growth, scale-up, and big tech. This is, of course, an oversimplification, but it helps us categorize how security and privacy functions evolve over time.
At each stage, companies must decide:
Where does privacy and security sit in the org?
Who owns what responsibilities?
How centralized or decentralized should the team be?
Let’s break it down.
1. Startup Stage (1-50 employees, single product focus)
Team Model: Centralized (One-Person Team Covering Both Privacy & Security)
At the earliest stages, privacy and security responsibilities usually fall on a single engineer (if any dedicated resource exists at all). This person is responsible for everything—network security, application security, compliance, incident response, and working with legal teams on privacy concerns.
Team Structure & Reporting
One dedicated security and privacy engineer (if possible)
Reports to CTO or Engineering Leadership
Roles & Responsibilities
Act as the sole security and privacy expert, covering network, application, and cloud security
Work with legal or external privacy counsel to ensure the product follows regulations (e.g., GDPR, CCPA)
Lay the foundation for future privacy/security processes
Evangelize security best practices among developers and leadership
Handle incidents and vulnerabilities directly
Conduct basic security reviews of code and infrastructure
Pros & Cons
✅ Pros:
Efficient—one person making decisions avoids bureaucracy
Holistic oversight—one person understands all aspects of security and privacy
Cost-effective—minimizes overhead
❌ Cons:
Overload risk—one person can’t scale with company growth
Limited expertise—one person can’t specialize in every area
Bottleneck—critical security/privacy decisions may slow down if they rely on one person
📌 When to Transition?
As soon as multiple products emerge or security/privacy incidents increase or workload becomes overwhelming, it’s time to expand the team.
2. Growth Stage (50-200 employees, expanding product portfolio, product-market fit)
Team Model: Centralized with Dedicated Privacy and Security Teams
At this stage, the company expands beyond one engineer and can explore spliting privacy and security into separate functions.
Team Structure & Reporting
2-3 dedicated engineers each for privacy and security
Reports to Head of or Director of Security & Privacy Engineering (who in turn reports to the CTO or VP of Engineering)
Roles & Responsibilities
Establish Centers of Excellence in key areas such as but not limited to:
Application Security (reviewing software for vulnerabilities)
Data Privacy (handling compliance and data governance)
Fraud Prevention (building tools to detect abuse)
Incident Response (dealing with emergency issues)
Embed security/privacy engineers earlier in the development process rather than at the tail end
Able to increase proactive security measures like penetration testing, red teaming, and threat modeling
Begin establishing security/privacy guidelines internally for engineers
Consider external white papers and trust-building initiatives
Pros & Cons
✅ Pros:
More resources—allows for proactive security/privacy rather than reactive fixes
Dedicated expertise—engineers can specialize in different areas
Centralized control ensures consistent policies
❌ Cons:
More coordination overhead—engineering teams must involve security/privacy earlier
Potential bottlenecks if all security/privacy decisions still flow through one team
📌 When to Transition?
As soon as the company scales beyond one major product, embedding privacy/security engineers in functional teams becomes an option.
3. Scale-Up Stage (500+ employees, multiple products and revenue streams)
Team Model: Embedded (Privacy & Security Engineers Inside Product Teams)
At this stage, security and privacy decentralize. Instead of one central team, engineers can be embedded into different product areas.
Team Structure & Reporting
Multiple 2-3 person squads dedicated to different functions:
Application Security, Infrastructure Security, Cloud Security
Privacy & Compliance, Data Protection, Trust & Safety
Reports to Head of Security and Privacy Engineering
Roles & Responsibilities
Maintain Centers of Excellence in key areas
Mix generalist and specialist security/privacy engineers across product teams
Develop security guidelines that are enforced within each team
Continue publishing external trust-building white papers
Increase purpose built security/privacy automation (e.g., automated vulnerability scans) in each functional area.
Pros & Cons
✅ Pros:
More scalable—each team has dedicated privacy/security resources
Reduces bottlenecks—privacy/security engineers can make decisions faster within teams
More proactive security—risks are caught during development, not after
❌ Cons:
Harder to maintain consistency—each team may interpret privacy/security differently
Requires strong leadership—central security/privacy org must still define policies
📌 When to Transition?
When teams become large enough that a central security/privacy org can’t review everything, embedding engineers is the natural next step.
4. Hybrid Model (Centralized + Decentralized Approach for Large Companies)
At big tech scale (Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Shopify), companies combine centralized and decentralized models:
Key Principles
Centralized teams define company-wide security/privacy strategy
Embedded teams in product orgs evangelize and implement security/privacy at the feature level
Inside the Industry
🔹 Apple → Strong centralized model—ideal for unified products like iOS/macOS
🔹 Google, Amazon, Meta → Hybrid model—centralized security/privacy teams build frameworks, while product teams own implementation
🔹 Shopify → Transitioned from centralized to hybrid as it scaled, embedding security/privacy into product squads
Inside Apple
My experience at Apple is the foundation of how I think about Technical Program Management and building efficient organizations that can achieve the impossible. I learned much about Privacy and Security organizations from Apple.
Apple applies the hybrid model with two teams - Privacy Engineering Team (partners with teams all across the company to make sure that Apple's products and services protect user privacy) and Security Engineering & Architecture (SEAR) (centralized team providing “security foundations across all of Apple’s products”). Having worked closely with both teams, the SEAR team also plays a product development role. SEAR team is responsible for building products like iCloud Keychain which is the foundation for other key services like iCloud Login Two Factor Authentication and the Advanced Data Protection feature that Apple rolled out recently.
Final Words
As a TPM, you don’t just manage projects—you help shape organizations. We operate at the intersection of multiple teams thus giving us an organizational view unlike any other role. Privacy and security engineering must scale alongside the business, and TPMs play a key role in making that happen.
✅ In early-stage startups, a single security/privacy engineer is sufficient
✅ As companies grow, teams split into specialized roles
✅ When companies scale, embedding privacy/security engineers in product teams becomes necessary
✅ Big tech companies operate hybrid models, balancing centralized oversight with decentralized execution
Understanding these team structures will help you guide leadership in designing the right privacy/security strategy at each stage of growth.
Until next time!
-Aadil