POPrivacy & Data Protection Officer
PO
Career

Privacy & Data Protection Officer

By the numbers
Typical pay
$141,900 / yr
Education to start
Bachelor's degree
Future demand
+4.5% by 2034
People in this job
622K
Figures shown for ·closest of 3 O*NET occupations
The work
A day, hour by hour
08:30
Inbox & alerts

Scan overnight breach alerts and regulator emails; flag anything urgent.

09:00
Data subject requests

Process three deletion requests and one access request before legal deadlines hit.

09:45
Breach triage

IT flagged a suspicious export — decide: reportable breach or handle internally?

11:00
Product review

New feature collects location data; push back or find a privacy-safe path forward.

13:00
Policy rewrite

Rewrite one section of the privacy notice so real people can actually understand it.

14:30
Staff training

Run a 45-minute session — what staff can and can't do with customer data.

15:30
Law tracking

New state privacy bill passed; map the gaps and draft a memo for the CEO.

16:30
Regulator call

Answer a regulator's questions about the company's data retention practices.

17:15
Risk log & wrap

Update the compliance risk register; decide what escalates to leadership tomorrow.

Things you do
  • Audit how a company collects, stores, and shares personal data.
  • Investigate data breaches and figure out what went wrong fast.
  • Write privacy policies employees and customers can actually understand.
  • Review new products before launch to catch privacy risks early.
  • Train staff on what they can and can't do with people's data.
Decisions you’ll make
  • Does this business need actually justify collecting all this personal data?
  • Is this a reportable breach, or can we handle it internally?
  • Do I push back on this product launch, or find a privacy-safe way to approve it?
  • Is the legal gray area here safe enough to proceed, or do we need outside counsel?
  • Should I escalate this compliance risk to the CEO now, or gather more facts first?
Education Pathways · how you get there
84 in 100 went the college route · 16 in 100 found another way in Less than 5 years, typically
Education mapped from O*NET: