Director of Engineering, Trust & Safety

About Strava

Strava is the app for active people. With over 200 million athletes in more than 185 countries, it’s more than tracking workouts—it’s where people make progress together, from new habits to new personal bests. No matter your sport or how you track it, Strava’s got you covered. Find your crew, crush your goals, and make every effort count. Start your journey with Strava today.

Our mission is simple: to motivate people to live their best active lives. We believe in the power of movement to connect and drive people forward.

As the engineering leader for Trust & Safety, you own the systems that keep Strava's community safe and compliant: proactive detection and moderation of harmful content, age assurances, and regulatory reporting. You’ll drive technology strategy for core services and product experiences, often built with AI/ML strategies. You partner closely with Policy, Legal, Product, Design, and Ops, while you own the engineering roadmap, team, and delivery.

This role is based in our San Francisco, CA office with a hybrid in-office requirement of at least 3 days per week.

What You'll Do:

• Lead a team of engineers supporting Trust & Safety at Strava and guide their career development and the teams overall evolution.

• Partner with AI/ML to set the technical strategy for how Strava applies LLM-based auto-moderation to detect and act on harmful content at scale

• Identify and drive the capabilities and tech investments that build a durable foundation for trust and safety, including the internal platform other Strava engineering teams integrate with.

• Partner closely with Product, Policy, Legal, Design, and Ops to deliver on Trust & Safety's most critical priorities.

• Build an inclusive, high-accountability team culture

What You’ll Bring to the Team:

• Engaging with an empathetic, business-aligned leadership mindset.

• Building strong working relationships with cross-functional stakeholders and understanding their needs, while staying clearly accountable for the engineering roadmap.

• Coaching engineers at all levels and career stages, including managers.

• Applying sound judgment to ambiguous, high-stakes situations

• Embracing an inclusive, collaborative environment that elevates a diverse set of voices and experiences.

• Have a track record delivering trust and safety initiatives for a consumer-facing application with user-generated content.

• Have experience leading and managing multiple teams of engineers, including managing managers and staff+ engineers.

• Have hands-on fluency with AI/ML approaches to content moderation and detection — e.g. LLM-based classifiers, automated flagging/auto-moderation systems

• Have experience partnering with Product and other cross-functional stakeholders to balance short-term deliverables with long-term technology investment

• Have 5+ years of experience in Trust & Safety and 5+ years of management experience, including at least 2 years managing managers.

• Full stack experience with 10+ years of systems engineering experience.

• Up to date on AI technology for engineering and engaged in applying best practices for yourself and your team.

Why Join Us?

Movement brings us together. At Strava, we’re building the world’s largest community of active people, helping them stay motivated and achieve their goals.

Our global team is passionate about making movement fun, meaningful, and accessible to everyone. Whether you’re shaping the technology, growing our community, or driving innovation, your work at Strava makes an impact.

When you join Strava, you’re not just joining a company—you’re joining a movement. If you’re ready to bring your energy, ideas, and drive, let’s build something incredible together.

Strava builds software that makes the best part of our athletes’ days even better. Just as we’re deeply committed to unlocking their potential, we’re dedicated to providing a world-class, inclusive workplace where our employees can grow and thrive, too. We’re backed by Sequoia Capital, TCV, Madrone Partners and Jackson Square Ventures, and we’re expanding in order to exceed the needs of our growing community of global athletes. Our culture reflects our community. We are continuously striving to hire and engage teammates from all backgrounds, experiences and perspectives because we know we are a stronger team together.

Strava is an equal opportunity employer. In keeping with the values of Strava, we make all employment decisions including hiring, evaluation, termination, promotional and training opportunities, without regard to race, religion, color, sex, age, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, physical handicap, mental disability, medical condition, disability, gender or identity or expression, pregnancy or pregnancy-related condition, marital status, height and/or weight.

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.

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