Hi everyone. I am currently looking for a career change. I do have a CS PhD degree and do software engineering in the US, but I am not (yet) familiar with cryptography. With most tech companies behaving increasingly cyberpunk these days, I would love to instead do work that advance people’s privacy, in a meaningful way. I trust that this community has good opinions on what work is actually valuable and what is theater.
However, I find it quite hard to find anything about career paths towards that. Perhaps I am looking for the wrong thing, or I don’t know what I am looking for? From what I gather,
- People seem to treat it as a niche in the security field. But surely privacy is more than encryption?
- (Paid) opportunities in the US seem scarce. People seem to mostly do volunteer work while having another job. Or are based in Europe.
- It is hard to know what skills to acquire to get into this field, beyond learning cryptography. Building tools could need anything.
I wonder if you think these feelings are true.
On the other hand, if you just google “privacy careers”, you would find privacy compliance officer positions for general companies. I wonder if these positions can be part of a path to realistically improving people’s privacy.
If anyone can point me towards anything that could provide answers, that would be very helpful. Appreciate your thoughts!