Director, Trust & Safety

At Lyft, our purpose is to serve and connect. We aim to achieve this by cultivating a work environment where all team members belong and have the opportunity to thrive. Safety is fundamental to the Lyft experience and to the trust riders, drivers, and our broader communities place in our platform. Lyft’s Safety and Customer Care team works through product, technology, data, policy, and operations to prevent harm before it happens, respond compassionately when it does, and continuously learn from every incident in efforts to make Lyft the safest way to get around.

We are looking for an experienced safety leader with deep Trust & Safety experience to help turn Lyft’s Trust & Safety strategy into impact at scale, with the final shape of this role informed by the strengths of the leader we bring on. This is a highly visible leadership role within Lyft’s Safety & Customer Care organization. You will report to the Senior Director and General Manager of Trust & Safety and sit on the Trust & Safety leadership team. You will additionally partner deeply with Product, Engineering, Data Science, Research & Design, Legal, Compliance, Risk, Communications, Finance, and other teams across Lyft.

The ideal candidate is an exceptional operator and people leader with Trust & Safety expertise, strong strategic judgment, and a track record of leading complex, high-stakes Trust & Safety organizations at scale. You can move fluidly between setting strategy with senior executives, developing leaders, overseeing large global operations and budgets, and diving into an emerging safety issue when the situation demands it.

Responsibilities

Lead Global Safety Compliance & Risk

• Oversee Lyft’s global safety compliance, transparency, and risk functions, supporting strong functional leaders and individual contributors on your team and strengthening capabilities as Lyft scales globally.
• Set direction across compliance readiness, safety transparency reporting, and risk assessment, ensuring strong governance and execution.
• Partner with Legal, Regulatory Compliance, and business leaders to anticipate emerging requirements and risks across markets, products, and business models.
• Ensure material risks, dependencies, and gaps are surfaced early, with clear ownership and senior-level visibility.

Lead Trust & Safety Business Enablement

• Guide the functions that turn Trust & Safety strategy and policy into scalable execution across the business.
• Ensure teams are aligned around clear priorities, ownership, and outcomes while empowering functional leaders to drive execution.
• Strengthen the playbooks, operating mechanisms, and cross-functional connections needed to safely launch new products, features, markets, and experiences.
• Help evolve Lyft’s Trust & Safety operating model as the business grows in scale and complexity.

Lead Trust & Safety Partnerships

• Set the Trust & Safety strategy for strategic partners, acquisitions, and businesses joining Lyft’s expanding global ecosystem.
• Support partnership leaders in building scalable approaches across different products, markets, operating models, regulatory environments, and risk profiles.
• Ensure partners are effectively integrated into Lyft’s safety ecosystem, with clear standards, ownership, governance, and escalation paths.
• Surface partnership risks and readiness early, enabling Lyft to grow and integrate new businesses safely.

Drive the Operating Rhythm

• Help translate strategy into priorities, operating plans, resource decisions, and measurable outcomes.
• Drive the organization’s planning, prioritization, goal-setting, and business review rhythms, ensuring clear decisions, accountability, and follow-through.
• Support the General Manager of Trust & Safety with Lyft-wide and executive efforts, including strategic planning, Board and executive preparation, and cross-functional initiatives requiring senior-level coordination.
• Distill complex issues into clear, decision-ready narratives and recommendations for executives and cross-functional leaders.

Build and Lead Exceptional Teams

• Lead talented individual contributors and people managers.
• Build an organization with clear accountability, strong decision-making, high standards, and the ability to operate effectively through ambiguity and change.
• Develop leaders who independently own large, complex areas while maintaining strong alignment across the broader Trust & Safety organization.
• Create an environment where teams combine urgency with sound judgment, challenge assumptions constructively, learn from mistakes, and are grounded in the experiences of riders and drivers.

Experience

• 10+ years of relevant professional experience, with significant experience in Trust & Safety, safety, risk, integrity, customer operations, platform operations, or another closely related field.
• Deep, direct experience leading at least two Trust & Safety functions (e.g. product and policy; policy and operations; operations and programs) at scale is required.
• Experience leading Trust & Safety at a scaled consumer technology, marketplace, mobility, social, sharing-economy, or other platform business.
• 5+ years of significant people leadership experience, including demonstrated success managing individual contributors, managers or senior leaders, and leaders of leaders.
• Demonstrated experience owning significant budgets and making strategic tradeoffs.
• Experience building scalable operating models, processes, governance mechanisms, and performance-management systems.
• Strong analytical and financial judgment, with the ability to use data to diagnose problems, evaluate tradeoffs, develop business cases, and allocate resources.
• Exceptional executive communication and stakeholder-management skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience integrating Trust & Safety operations following acquisitions, strategic partnerships, international expansion, or entry into new business lines.
• Experience operationalizing regulatory or compliance requirements across complex products and global operations.
• Experience with safety transparency reporting, regulatory reporting, audits, or other complex external accountability programs.
• Experience using AI, automation, and advanced analytics to improve operational quality, efficiency, detection, decision-making, or customer experience.

Role Considerations

Trust & Safety work can involve sensitive subject matter. In this role, you may be exposed to descriptions, reports, or other content involving violence, sexual assault, harassment, or other potentially graphic or distressing safety incidents. You may also be asked to participate in legal proceedings (e.g. depositions), related to Lyft’s Trust & Safety practices or specific matters.

Benefits:

• Great medical, dental, and vision insurance options
• Mental health benefits
• Family building benefits
• In addition to 12 observed holidays, salaried team members have unlimited paid time off, hourly team members have 15 days paid time off
• 401(k) plan to help save for your future
• 18 weeks of paid parental leave. Biological, adoptive, and foster parents are all eligible
• Pre-tax commuter benefits
• Lyft Pink - Lyft team members get an exclusive opportunity to test new benefits of our Ridership Program

Lyft is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer committed to an inclusive and diverse workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regards to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status or any other basis prohibited by law. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.

This role will be in-office on a hybrid schedule — Team Members are expected to work in the office 3 days per week on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Additionally, hybrid roles have the flexibility to work from anywhere for up to 4 weeks per year.

The expected range of pay for this position in the San Francisco or New York areas is $203,000 - $253,750. Salary ranges are dependent on a variety of factors, including qualifications, experience and geographic location. Range is not inclusive of potential equity offering, bonus or benefits. Your recruiter can share more information about the salary range specific to your working location and other factors during the hiring process.