Zach Singleton: The Man Helping Keep AI Safe at Google DeepMind

Let me tell you about Zach Singleton.

If you use Gemini — Google’s flagship AI — or any of the DeepMind-powered models shaping this new age of intelligence, then a little bit of Zach’s work touches your life whether you know it or not. Because Zach is the Founding Head of Product for Google DeepMind’s Security & Privacy team, working out of New York. That makes him one of the people deciding how this powerful new technology gets built safely, how it gets protected, and how it gets trusted. That’s not a small job — that’s a “helping steer the future” job. And he’s out here doing it.

Zach is the founding product lead for DeepMind’s Security & Privacy team. In plain English: when Google builds its frontier AI models — Gemini and the DeepMind family — security and privacy aren’t afterthoughts bolted on at the end. They’re baked in from the start, and Zach is the person leading the product strategy for that whole function. He’s been building teams spanning Agent Security, Security & Privacy post-training, and AI-powered security on the Gemini Model Team itself. That’s the frontier.

This didn’t start at Google. Before DeepMind, Zach was a product manager for Uber’s Privacy Engineering team — the folks who helped bring Uber into compliance with Europe’s GDPR, one of the toughest data-privacy laws in the world. He’s spent his whole career wrestling with the question: how do we build powerful technology that people can actually trust?

Here’s the part that makes this story hit different. Zach grew up in Oakland and attended Marin Academy in San Rafael — class of 2002. He went on to computer science, and he’s been deeply connected to The Hidden Genius Project, the Oakland nonprofit that mentors and trains young Black men for careers in tech, serving among its founding program architects.

In his own words, the underrepresentation of Black folks in STEM is often about access: “They don’t have access to friends, family, or anyone who looks like them who can share how engineering in practice is different.” Zach is proof of what happens when that access exists — and he’s spent his career making sure the next generation gets it.

Let’s be real: the AI revolution is the biggest technology story of our lifetime. And the question everyone is asking — in boardrooms, in Washington, in classrooms — is: can we trust it? Zach Singleton is one of the few Black leaders at the very center of answering that question for one of the most important AI companies on Earth. He’s American-born, from Oakland roots, now in New York, holding a first-of-its-kind role at the intersection of security, privacy, and frontier AI.

So the next time you hear about another big Gemini or DeepMind launch, know this: there’s a brother from the Bay Area making sure that intelligence is protected, private, and trustworthy. That’s what moving the world forward actually looks like.

Quick Facts

• Hometown: Oakland, California
• Education: Marin Academy, San Rafael — Class of 2002
• Current role: Founding Head of Product, Security & Privacy — Google DeepMind (New York)
• Career path: Product Manager, Privacy Engineering, Uber (incl. GDPR compliance) → Founding Head of Security & Privacy Product, Google DeepMind
• Notable: One of the few Black leaders at the center of AI safety, security, and privacy at Google’s frontier-model division; founding program architect with The Hidden Genius Project