Trust & Safety

Kickstarting your Trust & Safety career in 2026

Kickstarting your Trust & Safety career in 2026

Over the last few years, the Trust & Safety industry has seen rapid changes due to machine learning and AI, global regulations, and platform growth. It is no longer an entry-level friendly industry with a lot of opportunities in Western countries for recent graduates. I am asked often how I got into this industry and what tips I have for others trying to get in. This article is my one-stop-shop for anyone wanting to kickstart their Trust & Safety career in 2026.

Trust & Safety?!

For most people who find this article (or who I am sending this to – hello! 👋) it is probably already clear what a Trust & Safety team does, what typical roles may look like, and what our day-to-day activities are. If that is you – feel free to skip this section! But I do think it is important to talk about what Trust & Safety looks like as an industry in 2026.

A lot of people will associate Trust & Safety with content moderation. Which makes sense, content moderation is an important aspect of our work. When users on our platforms post content we don't allow, we delete it – which can be anything from spam, fraud, nudity, exploitation, harassment, and more. However there is a lot that goes into content moderation and it is for sure not everything a Trust & Safety team does.

First of all - Trust & Safety isn't limited to social media and communication platforms. Every platform where people interact with each other or share (what we call) user generated content (UGC) needs safety. If you sign up for any platform, you have an expectation you can trust the platform and that it is safe to use it. This includes marketplaces, online games, social media, travel and booking sites, dating apps, cloud storage, and so much more.

The irony of the Space Shuttle being displayed above an article about safety has not gone unnoticed ;-) Beyond signifying the launch of your career, the image I chose for this article is also about the astronauts who trusted the platform they used and had to pay the ultimate price. Trust & Safety is about people and making a real impact, our actions have real consequences.

Nowadays, a lot of content moderation – especially reactive (reviewing user reports) has been outsourced or moved entirely to AI. While it is still an important part of our work, in-company analysts spend much less time reviewing content but rather focus on scaled enforcement through machine learning and AI, investigating and disrupting threats, and regulatory compliance.

If you ask me what Trust & Safety entails today, I'd say it is a combination of ensuring platforms meet regulatory requirements, investigate threats to users, the platform, and society, and remove content platforms don't allow. This requires a lot of different roles that can be named differently for each platform, but in general it consists of:

  • Content Moderators: Reviews reports about user-generated content and evaluates them against the platforms rules
  • Threat Investigators: Investigate and disrupt threat actors, for example violent extremists, organized cyber crime, and child abuse and exploitation
  • Compliance & Legal: Ensures moderation practices are in line with regulations and laws
  • Policy Writers: Develop new policies and calibrate with teams on enforcement of those policies
  • Safety Engineers: Build new tools for users and Trust & Safety teams to keep users safe
  • Crisis Response / Incident Management: Prepare for and manage crises facing the platform, for example when a platform is involved in a high profile incident
  • Quality Assurance, Training, and Outsourcing: Support scaled enforcement through outsourced content moderation and improve quality of safety systems and decisions

Staying ahead of the curve

Rapid change means we have to stay ahead of the curve. We need to develop critical skills and quickly because Trust & Safety is a competitive field following multiple layoffs at major platforms. These are the top skills in my opinion going into 2026:

  1. Understanding scale and growth, with for a lot of companies means applying machine learning and AI. Not knowing what role AI plays in today's threat landscape and mitigation efforts means you will not land a job in Trust & Safety. Make sure you understand how AI can be used to scale enforcement, how it can proactively detect harmful content, how it is used to limit exposure to that harmful content,
  2. Being able to read regulations and understand what they impose on platforms, who can be held liable, what minimum requirements look like, how transparency reports should be shaped, who regulators are and what they want is important. Start with regulations in the United States, Europe, Australia, and the UK as they have been shaped the most already. Interesting regulations are the Digital Services Act (DSA) in Europe, the Online Safety Act (OSA) in the UK and Australia, and some more specific regulations such as the Terrorist Content Online (TCO) regulation in Europe, the Take It Down Act (TIDA) in the United States, and upcoming AI regulations.
  3. Hard skills, especially involving machine learning and AI as well as data exploration is incredibly important. Most Trust & Safety jobs now require some technical knowledge, unless you are looking for a job in content moderation. Start with developing your skills working with LLMs and using SQL / Python to explore large data sets.
  4. Ultimately Trust & Safety requires a deep understanding of online harm and digital platforms, risk assessments, understanding of how features can be used for harm, and in some cases domain expertise. For example, if you want to work in preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE), you need to know about nihilistic violent extremism (NVE), terrorist financing, coded language and dog whistles, and much more.

Even if your role does not directly relate to investigations, regulations and policy, or AI, developing your skills in these areas is crucial to stay relevant and maximize your chances of getting into and staying in the Trust & Safety industry.

Your background

There are barely any study programs for the Trust & Safety industry and many of us have diverse backgrounds. Since our work is values-based that is actually incredibly important. That being said, you may want to pursue any of these options (or highlight them on your resume!) if you want to increase your chances.

  • Law Enforcement: Having previous experience working in law enforcement, particularly investigating child abuse and exploitation, terrorism, extremism, and radicalization, or organized cyber crime is a major selling point for you.
  • Non-governmental organizations (NGOs): If you have worked for an NGO focused on researching online harm, that is incredibly valuable experience to bring to any Trust & Safety team. For example, if you have worked for the National Center for Missing & Exploitated Children (NCMEC) or the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), definitely highlight that experience!
  • Intelligence: Any previous (threat) intelligence work is valuable, for example if you have worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or a private organization providing threat research or corporate security.
  • Bilingual: Speaking more than one language, in particular Spanish, Russian, or Arabic is going to increase your options. Many Trust & Safety jobs nowadays are specializing in various geographical locations and speaking these languages is a major plus.
  • Criminology / Sociology / Social Work: Study programs or experience working with people in a field related to the human psychology is nice to have because Trust & Safety is values-based and understanding people is an important part of that.

I've personally landed my first Trust & Safety job because I had extensive experience moderating large online communities and a background in cyber security. Everyone has such a diverse background and it is hard to list everything that can benefit your application, partly because there are a lot of different Trust & Safety jobs. If you want to become a Safety Engineer, highlight past engineering, programming, and development experience. If you want to write policies, any past research, writing, and NGO work is going to be valuable.

Luckily for you it is much easier nowadays to connect with people in the industry! So you can speak to people about your background and personal situation, a lot of people would love to help you out. You can start here:
T&S Mentor Match – Trust & Safety Network
Trust & Safety Network
Trust & Safety Coffee Chats - Trust & Safety Professional Association
Trust & Safety Coffee Chats are one-on-one conversations, providing mentorship to current and aspiring trust and safety professionals.
Trust & Safety Professional Association

Resources

To stay up to date or learn more about Trust & Safety, I have compiled a list of resources I can personally recommend. There is a lot more out there, so feel free to search for more! However these are the resources I recommend you take a look at minimum.

Learn more about Trust & Safety

Newsletters & Blogs

Podcasts & Videos

Job Pages

Communities

You made it to the bottom! Don't forget to check the resources I've linked to, I'll continue to update this article to ensure it is always up-to-date so come back every so often to check out the changes.