Niantic Privacy Notice for Job Applicants and Candidates

Effective: February 5, 2025

Niantic, Inc. and its subsidiaries (“Niantic”, “we”, or “us”) have prepared this Privacy Notice for Job Applicants and Candidates (the “Notice”) in order to explain:

What information we collect during the application and recruitment process;
Why we collect that information;
How we use that information;
How we secure that information; and
Your rights with respect to that information.

Who does this Notice apply to?

This Notice applies to our collection and use of personal data about job applicants or candidates who apply to, or interview for, a position at Niantic or otherwise engage with us throughout our application and recruitment process. If you are a resident of the European Economic Area (“EEA”), the United Kingdom (“UK”), Switzerland, or certain states in the United States (“US”), please refer to the location specific disclosures at the bottom of this Notice for more information.

This Notice does not apply to Niantic employee personal data, which is subject to separate Employee Privacy Notices made available to them by Niantic.

Your use of Niantic’s products and services is governed by Niantic’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

What categories of personal data does Niantic collect about me?

When we say “personal data” or “personal information” we mean any information relating to you. Niantic may collect personal data directly from you as a job applicant or recruit, or may receive personal data from external sources like a recruiting service or publicly available sources (e.g., your LinkedIn profile), or in connection with a background, employment, or reference check.

Depending on the position you are applying for and how far you progress in the application or recruitment process, Niantic may collect, process and use the following categories and types of personal data about you:

Contact information, such as your name, address, email address and phone number;
Information about your professional and educational history, such as information in your resume, CV and cover letter including your current job, and your professional and educational history and qualifications;
Information about the type of employment sought, such as job preferences, willingness to relocate, information related to compensation and benefits including desired salary, and details of an offer of employment;
Sensitive and/or equal opportunity information, such as military or veteran status, gender, citizenship and/or nationality, health or medical information and/or your racial or ethnic origin, as permitted or required by law; and
Other information provided in support of your application or recruitment process, including additional information you provide including for immigration or visa purposes, information from your interviews and references, information from recruiters or other external sources, and, where applicable, information needed for background checks and the results of those checks.

Why does Niantic need to collect, process and use my data and what is the legal basis for doing so?

Niantic will use personal data for our application and recruitment process, including to:

Identify and evaluate job applicants, including to assess your skills, qualifications, eligibility and suitability for working at Niantic;
Communicate with you about the recruitment and hiring process and your application;
Provide appropriate adjustments or accommodations during the application and recruitment process, where applicable;
Verify your information and carry out background, employment, and reference checks, where applicable;
Keep records related to our recruitment and hiring processes, analyze and improve our recruitment process, and, with your consent, ensure meaningful equal opportunity and diversity initiative monitoring and reporting; and
Comply with applicable laws, regulations, corporate governance requirements, and legal and regulatory processes and requests, for purposes connected to legal claims, and to protect the employees, rights and property of Niantic, other job applicants, or the public, as permitted or required by law.

We process your personal data in order to decide whether to employ you (including, where applicable, to determine whether to enter into a contract of employment with you). It is also in our legitimate interests to decide whether to consider or hire you for a position with Niantic, to improve our application and recruitment process, to prevent fraud, and to protect the employees, rights and property of Niantic, other job applicants, or the public. If you fail to provide information when requested that is necessary for us to consider your application, we will not be able to process your application successfully.

We will collect the sensitive and/or equal opportunity information described above only with your consent or as otherwise permitted or required by applicable law. If you provide this information, it will not be considered in the hiring process. We also may seek your consent to process other personal information in specific circumstances.

Niantic, Inc. may share your personal data with its subsidiaries in relation to the purposes described above. Where data is shared in this way, it is our policy to limit the categories of individuals who have access to that information. Niantic may transfer personal data to other parties, including within and outside of Niantic as follows:

We may use service providers to perform some of the processing listed above, such as recruiting or identifying candidates, processing and tracking your application and the recruiting process and hiring pipeline, organizing travel for interviews, performing background or criminal records checks, providing you with an offer letter or contract of employment and for legal services including for the purpose of compliance with immigration, visa, or other legal obligations or issues. These third-party service providers are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions;
If you are referred for a job at Niantic by a current Niantic employee, with your consent, we may inform that employee about the progress or outcome of your application;
We will share your personal data with third parties, such as your references, with your consent. We rely on you to obtain consent from your references before providing us with their information;
We may be required to transfer your personal data to regulators, courts, other authorities or regulatory bodies, or law enforcement agencies for the purpose of complying with legal obligations or valid legal processes such as search warrants, subpoenas, or court orders.
We may share your personal data with third parties to protect the property, rights, and safety of Niantic and our employees, users, applicants, candidates, and the public;
If a business transfer or change in ownership occurs.
For additional purposes with your consent where required by law.

Niantic operates globally and your personal data will very likely be transferred and stored in a country outside of your home country, including in the United States. The data protection laws in these countries may not be the same as in your home country. If we transfer your personal data from one such country to other countries, including the United States, we ensure that a similar degree of protection is provided to your personal data.

How does Niantic keep my personal data safe?

We have security measures in place designed to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, or accessed in an unauthorized way, improperly altered or disclosed. We also limit access to your personal data to employees, agents, contractors and other parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

How long will Niantic keep my personal data for?

It is our policy not to keep personal information for longer than is necessary, and we use the following criteria to make this determination: If you apply for a job at Niantic and are unsuccessful we will keep your personal data after your application has been resolved for a period of time determined based on the applicable local law in order to consider you for other positions at Niantic, improve our application and recruitment process and in case we must defend a legal claim involving our application or recruitment process. If you do not want us to consider you for other positions at Niantic or use your data to improve our application and recruitment process, please contact us using the information below in the section entitled Who can I contact about this?. If you become an employee with Niantic, your information may become part of your employment record.

What rights do I have in respect of my personal information?

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during the recruitment process. In certain countries, you may have certain rights under data protection law. These may include the right to request access to, correct, or erase the personal data that we hold about you or to object to or withdraw your consent to the processing of your personal data under certain circumstances. You may also have the right to lodge a complaint with the local data protection authority. If you want to exercise your rights, please contact us using the information in the section entitled Who can I contact about this?. We will respond to requests in accordance with applicable law, so there may be circumstances where we are not able to comply with your request. We may request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and verify your rights, and to provide you with the personal data that we hold about you or respond to your request.

Who can I contact about this?

If you have any questions or comments on this Notice or would like to exercise your rights as a data subject, you can email us at privacy@nianticlabs.com or our Data Protection Officer at dpo@nianticlabs.com, or you can contact us at Niantic Inc., 1 Ferry Building, Suite 200, San Francisco, CA 94111.

Changes to this Notice.

Personal data that we collect is covered by the Privacy Notice in effect at the time such information is collected. We may make changes to this Privacy Notice from time to time, so please check back to obtain the most up to date information. You will be given reasonable notice of any material change.

EEA, UK, and Switzerland Specific Disclosures

This section supplements the Notice and applies only to personal data collected about job applicants and candidates who are residents of the EEA, UK, or Switzerland and subject to General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) (EU 2016/679), UK GDPR (as supplemented by section 205(4)) of the UK Data Protection Act 2018, or the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection of 25 September 2020. The terms “personal data” or “personal information” shall have the same meaning as those terms would be defined under applicable data protection law, including “sensitive” or “special category” data.

Data Controller

Your data controller is Niantic International Limited in the UK (11th Floor Whitefriars, Lewins Mead, Bristol, United Kingdom, BS1 2NT).

Legal Basis for Processing

Please refer to the Why does Niantic need to collect, process and use my data and what is the legal basis for doing so? section of this Notice for the legal bases we rely on to process your personal data.

Data Subject Rights

Individuals in the EEA, UK, and Switzerland have certain rights with regards to your personal information, including:

Right to be informed
Right of access
Right to rectification
Right to erasure (right to be forgotten)
Right to restriction of processing
Right to data portability
Right to object
Right not be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing
Right to withdraw consent
Right to lodge a complaint

If you would like to exercise your rights as a data subject, you can email us at privacy@nianticlabs.com or our Data Protection Officer at dpo@nianticlabs.com, or you can contact us at Niantic Inc., 1 Ferry Building, Suite 200, San Francisco, CA 94111.

We’d appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns directly so we’d prefer you to please first contact us. However, if you’re based in the EEA, the UK, or Switzerland and believe that we have not complied with data protection laws, you can complain to your local supervisory authority, which in the EEA is the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), in the UK is the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), and in Switzerland is the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC).

If you’re based in the EEA, you can also contact our EU Representative, EDPO. EDPO can be contacted:

By using EDPO’s online request form
By writing to EDPO at Avenue Huart Hamoir 71, 1030 Brussels, Belgium

International Data Transfers

If we transfer your personal data from the EEA, UK, or Switzerland to other countries, including the US, we ensure that a similar degree of protection is provided to your personal data as within the EEA, UK, or Switzerland by ensuring that at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

The country that your personal data is transferred to is a country that the European Commission or other relevant authority has deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data as the EEA, UK, or Switzerland.
We use specific contractual clauses approved by the European Commission or other relevant authority which give personal data the same protection as it has in the EEA, UK, or Switzerland when we engage with service providers.
When we engage with service providers in the US that are part of a Privacy Shield or Privacy Bridge framework, they are required to provide the same protection of your personal data as it has in the EEA, UK, or Switzerland.

Disclosures Specific to Residents of Certain US States

Some US states, such as California, have enacted privacy laws that grant their residents certain rights and require certain disclosures (“State Privacy Laws”). If you are a resident of one of these states, this section applies to you. The terms “personal data” or “personal information” shall have the same meaning as those terms would be defined under applicable State Privacy Law, including “sensitive” or “special category” data.

Your Rights

You may have the right to request the categories and specific pieces of personal data we have collected about you and to request the deletion or correction of your personal data. You may submit to us a request to exercise your rights as set forth in the What rights do I have in respect of my personal information? section. You may also have the right to opt out of any “sales” of your personal information. Because Niantic does not sell personal information as that term is defined by the State Privacy Laws, Niantic does not offer this opt out. You may also have the right to appeal if we deny your request to exercise your privacy rights, which you may do by contacting us at privacy@nianticlabs.com. If you have concerns about the result of an appeal, you may contact the attorney general in the state where you reside.

California Specific Disclosures

This section supplements the Notice and applies only to personal information collected about job applicants and candidates who are residents of California pursuant to the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, (as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020, hereinafter “CCPA”).

Collection and Use of Personal Data

In the preceding 12 months, the personal information we have collected falls under the following categories listed in the CCPA: identifiers, personal information categories listed in the California Customer Records statute (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e)); protected classification characteristics under California or federal law; professional or employment-related information; and education information.

To learn more about the specific personal information we collect, the sources, and purposes of such collection, please see the above sections, What categories of personal data does Niantic collect about me? and Why does Niantic need to collect, process and use my data and what is the legal basis for doing so?.

Sale or Sharing of Personal Data

We do not “sell” or “share” your personal information as those terms are defined under the CCPA. Niantic has no actual knowledge of selling or sharing the personal information of minors under 16 years of age.

Disclosure of Personal Data for a Business Purpose

In the preceding 12 months, we have disclosed for a business purpose the following categories of personal information: identifiers, personal information categories listed in the California Customer Records statute (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e)); protected classification characteristics under California or federal law; professional or employment-related information; and education information. To learn more about the disclosure of your personal information, please see the above section, Who might Niantic share my personal information with?.

Sensitive Data

We do not “sell” or “share” the personal information of California residents as those terms are defined by the CCPA, nor do we collect or process sensitive personal information for the purpose of inferring characteristics about you. We also do not use sensitive personal information for purposes other than those specified in Section 7027(m) of the California Privacy Rights Act regulations promulgated by the California Privacy Protection Agency. Therefore, we do not offer you the option to opt out or to limit the use of your sensitive personal information.

What rights do I have in respect of my personal information?

As a California resident, you have certain rights under CCPA, including:

Right to know: You can request that a business disclose to you: (1) the categories and/or specific pieces of personal information they have collected about you, (2) the categories of sources for that personal information, (3) the purposes for which the business uses that information, (4) the categories of third parties with whom the business discloses the information, and (5) the categories of information that the business sells or discloses to third parties. You can make a request to know up to twice a year, free of charge.
Right to delete: You can request that businesses delete personal information they collected from you and tell their service providers to do the same, subject to certain exceptions (such as if the business is legally required to keep the information).
Right to opt-out of sale or sharing: You may request that businesses stop selling or sharing your personal information (“opt-out”), including via a user-enabled global privacy control. Businesses cannot sell or share your personal information after they receive your opt-out request unless you later authorize them to do so again.
Right to correct: You may ask businesses to correct inaccurate information that they have about you.
Right to limit use and disclosure of sensitive personal information: You can direct businesses to only use your sensitive personal information (for example, your social security number, financial account information, your precise geolocation data, or your genetic data) for limited purposes, such as providing you with the services you requested.
Right to non-discrimination: You have the right not to receive discriminatory treatment by a business for the exercise of your CCPA rights, including an employee’s, applicant’s, or independent contractor’s right not to be retaliated against for the exercise of their CCPA rights.

If you would like to exercise your rights, you can email us at privacy@nianticlabs.com or our Data Protection Officer at dpo@nianticlabs.com, or you can contact us at Niantic Inc., 1 Ferry Building, Suite 200, San Francisco, CA 94111. We will respond to requests in accordance with applicable law, so there may be circumstances where we are not able to comply with your request. We may request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and verify your rights, and to provide you with the personal information that we hold about you or respond to your request.

Authorized Agents

If you authorize another person to submit a request to know, correct, or delete on your behalf, we may ask you to verify your identity or to confirm that you authorized another person to make such a request on your behalf. Separately, such other person may have to submit proof that they are authorized to make a request on your behalf.