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Defining Privacy Engineering
Privacy Engineering Domains
This resource, developed by the IAPP Privacy Engineering Section Advisory Board and part of the Privacy Engineering Domains series, provides a broad definition of privacy engineering.
Last updated: July 2025
This resource provides a broad definition of privacy engineering and highlights various domains in which privacy engineers can significantly impact the protection of privacy.
Privacy engineering is the act of applying systematic, scientific or methodological approaches to include requirements for privacy* in the design, development, and operations of systems and services through various domains, such as software development, system design, data science, physical architecture, process design, information technology infrastructure and human-computer interaction/user experience design.
The privacy engineering domain examples and quotes within this resource are exemplary for work in each domain and are not representative definitions.
This resource is part of a wider IAPP series on Privacy Engineering Domains, which facilitates a deeper understanding of and collaboration within the increasingly important field of privacy engineering.
Domains of privacy engineering
The below section overviews the domains that define privacy engineering. This resource is available as a chart in PDF format here.
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Software development
EXAMPLE
"I perform code audits to ensure our software meets the organization’s privacy objectives, and evaluate and build tooling to support automation of privacy risk evaluation and privacy policy enforcement."
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System design
EXAMPLE
"I maximize privacy, security, useability and other qualities while designing complex systems."
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Data science
EXAMPLE
"I analyze data to achieve privacy-respecting outcomes, and apply anonymization or deidentification techniques to optimize privacy and utility."
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Physical architecture
EXAMPLE
"I evaluate floor and building plans to protect employee and visitor privacy in areas such as focus rooms, patient rooms, restrooms and telephone booths."
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Process design
EXAMPLE
"I use business process modeling and other techniques to ensure privacy and organizational goals are integrated into my company’s business processes."
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IT infrastructure
EXAMPLE
"I develop our IT infrastructure to ensure data flows between systems have controls in place to limit data use for specific purposes."
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HCI/UX design
EXAMPLE
"I conduct user studies to ensure we do not use deceptive design and our customers understand what they consent to."