This report, published by the IAPP and TRU Staffing Partners, explores the compensation, both financial and nonfinancial, offered to privacy professionals. The full version of the report, available only to IAPP members, can be accessed here.

Published: May 2023

Contributors:

Saz Kanthasamy

In this report we explore the compensation, both financial and nonfinancial, offered to privacy professionals. We focused on understanding key impacts on compensation, such as education, experience, motivation and job satisfaction, as well as the nature and size of employers. This report aims to provide privacy pros with an updated view and opportunity to benchmark their compensation.

We asked our global membership base to complete the 27-question salary survey. Over the course of seven weeks, more than 1,400 people from over 60 countries responded.

In a change to previous years, the 2023 salary survey was expanded to focus on both internal privacy roles, i.e., those working within an organization’s privacy function or with privacy-related roles, and external roles, i.e., those offering privacy-related services, such as consultants, lawyers and vendors.

To compliment the report, the IAPP published an at-a-glance infographic that presents key data points, which can be accessed here.

Additionally, we expanded the scope of the questionnaire to consider non-salary compensation and benefits in more detail. As a result, we obtained more data from privacy pros working across the industry, allowing greater benchmarking for those looking to compare compensation packages.

Key takeaways

Gender

Across all roles, female respondents earned 1% more on average in their base salaries than male respondents. Variation exists among specific roles, with female global CPOs reporting 12% higher base salaries and male privacy analysts earning 13% more.

Job satisfaction

Respondents were overwhelmingly satisfied with their current roles, with 86% reporting they were satisfied and 61% selecting a score above eight out of 10, where 10 is extremely satisfied.

Job satisfaction of privacy pros, where zero means not satisfied at all and 10 means extremely satisfied

Location

U.S. privacy pros make 55% more on average in their base salaries compared to their European counterparts. This rises to 103% more depending on the specific role.

Of respondents, 69% work from home more than they do in the office. Only 5% of respondents are fully office based, 40% work from home full time and 17% work three days or fewer in the office.

Qualifications

Respondents with any one IAPP certification earned over 13% more than those with no IAPP qualifications, while those with multiple IAPP certifications earned just over 27% more than those with no IAPP qualifications.