# Tips or resources on any career that advances privacy? **URL:** https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/tips-or-resources-on-any-career-that-advances-privacy/38365 **Category:** Questions **Created:** 2026-06-05T23:04:41Z **Posts:** 9 ## Post 1 by @casting_cactus — 2026-06-05T23:04:41Z 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! --- ## Post 2 by @Expert4870 — 2026-06-06T00:01:58Z > **Clarification hidden cuz i don’t want to bury the thread with a non-answer.** > > > [@casting_cactus](#): > > > > With most tech companies behaving increasingly cyberpunk these days > > What do you mean by this? --- ## Post 3 by @FranklyFlawless — 2026-06-06T06:44:30Z > [@casting_cactus](#): > > If anyone can point me towards anything that could provide answers, that would be very helpful. Appreciate your thoughts! > **[The Tor Project | Privacy & Freedom Online](https://www.torproject.org/about/jobs/senior-android-engineer/)** > > Defend yourself against tracking and surveillance. Circumvent censorship. > [@](#): > > We are seeking a Senior Android Engineer focused on building and maintaining TPI’s mobile products. You will work closely with engineers and cross-functional partners to design, implement, and ship privacy-preserving features used by people around the world. > > This role emphasizes technical depth, strong collaboration, and mentorship through day-to-day engineering work. You will help shape technical approaches, contribute to architectural decisions, and take ownership of complex work, while supporting the growth of other members of the team. --- ## Post 4 by @Carey — 2026-06-06T15:56:12Z I was a software engineer for about 30 years, and towards the end of my career, I tried to get into “Privacy” at my large tech company. In my experience, “privacy” is a policy/compliance thing for most companies. It seems to be more about being a liaison between the legal dept and engineering. If you’re lucky, you can design technical frameworks (probably internal) that support privacy goals - like data governance or perhaps writing design specs/goals. So if you’re a tech person who wants to work in “privacy”, you either need to work for a tech company that’s explicitly about enhancing privacy (like Proton or Tor), or you work on “security” in ways that enables privacy for your users - like implementing E2EE, refactoring existing code to support anonymity/de-identification, etc. Given that you have a PhD, you might look at finding ways to use [homomorphic encryption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption) or other [privacy-enhancing technologies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy-enhancing_technologies). --- ## Post 5 by @casting_cactus — 2026-06-07T22:14:22Z > **Offtopic** > > Not respecting user choices, pushing their goals like GenAI on users, anti-competitive behavior, chasing their own tails in the name of “it is the future”, do anything just so the stock price goes up, you name it. --- ## Post 6 by @casting_cactus — 2026-06-07T22:17:09Z Thanks! This particular one might be out of my expertise but this general direction (checking what Tor etc. needs) sounds promising. --- ## Post 7 by @casting_cactus — 2026-06-07T22:42:06Z Thanks so much for your input! > “privacy” is a policy/compliance thing for most companies Yes, this is what I was afraid of. It seems to be at the whims of what the company decides to do. > you might look at finding ways to use homomorphic encryption or other privacy-enhancing technologies Do you happen to know where this kind of work generally happens? Academia, open-source projects, or tech companies with privacy products? --- ## Post 8 by @Carey — 2026-06-07T22:57:30Z > [@casting_cactus](#): > > Do you happen to know where this kind of work generally happens? Academia, open-source projects, or tech companies with privacy products? I honestly don’t know. I’m sure some of this is being studied in academia, but I don’t know of any specific companies hiring for this work right now. --- ## Post 9 by @Expert4870 — 2026-06-08T00:26:32Z > **Summary** > > Ah, I misread as cypherpunk so that makes much more sense. Never heard the current affairs described as cyberpunk but ig it works.