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Anticipated start: December 2025

Position duration: 2 years with possibility for extension pending grant proposals

 

About CEGA

The Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) is a hub for research, training and innovation headquartered at the University of California, Berkeley. We generate insights that decision-makers can use to improve policies, programs, and people’s lives. Our best-in-class academic network includes nearly 200 faculty, 80 scholars from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs)—primarily from East and West Africa—and hundreds of graduate students from diverse academic disciplines who produce rigorous evidence about what works to expand education, health, and economic opportunities for people living in poverty. Our business model involves curating policy-relevant research agendas in collaboration with development leaders, overseeing competitive grant-making to answer critical questions, investing in research capacity, and strategically connecting research and ideas to inform decision-making by governments, NGOs, and the private sector.

 

Position Description

CEGA seeks a talented Privacy Engineer to support the Center’s new Data Privacy Lab, which explores how privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) can enable data sharing, research, and innovation in LMICs. Through a series of real-world collaborations with partner organizations, the Lab will develop and deploy PETs in LMIC settings, using these experiences to create a privacy playbook that supports future organizations in navigating the complexities of applying PETs in practice. This position is based in Berkeley, California with potential fieldwork assignments abroad. They will report directly to Dr. Nitin Kohli, who heads the Lab, and will collaborate with a team to advance the Lab and CEGA’s research agendas. The exact role and responsibilities will depend on your strengths and interests, but examples of projects include:
 

  • PET research and implementation: Investigate, evaluate, and implement applicable PETs for different projects such as differential privacy, synthetic data, homomorphic encryption, secure multi-party computation, and private set intersection.
  • Production-Grade PET solutions development: Prototype and scale technical solutions for privacy-preserving data sharing and joint analytics and model building across multiple entities.
  • Large-scale data engineering: Process and automate the ETL, clean and analyze vast amounts of structured and unstructured data.
  • Back-end ops: Build and maintain high-performance computing infrastructure to enable efficient processing and analysis of petabytes of heterogeneous data.
  • Data Privacy Lab Support: Advise on grant proposals, reports, and strategy. Develop strong relationships and provide technical support to partners in LMICs.

 

Required Qualifications

  • Bachelor's Degree in Engineering, Computer or Information Science, Mathematics, or a related technical field; or 2+ years of professional experience with object-oriented programming.

 

Additional Qualifications

  • Expertise in Python, as well as at least one other object-oriented programming language (such Java/Scala or C/C++) and SQL.  By “expertise,” we mean that candidates are able to code a moderately complex program (such as a CLI version of Scrabble) in syntactically-correct, idiomatic code, without reference materials.
  • Mastery of *nix command-line tools and scripting.
  • Experience with at least one of the following PETs: differential privacy, homomorphic encryption, secure multiparty computation, private set intersection, zero knowledge proofs.
  • Excellent communication skills, meticulous attention to detail, excellent coding standards (including careful code documentation and testing), and ability to work with version control.

 

Preferred Qualifications

  • Master’s Degree or higher in Engineering, Computer or Information Science, Cybersecurity, Mathematics, or a related technical field.
  • Experience with *nix sysadmin, DBA, and/or cloud infrastructure deployment (such as Docker or other containerization systems).
  • Applied experience with PETs and open-source implementations (e.g., OpenDP).
  • Experience with “big data”  and cloud infrastructure technologies such as Hadoop and Spark, ideally including past work with large structured and unstructured datasets.
  • Good understanding of inferential and descriptive statistics, and working knowledge of statistical programming languages (e.g., R, Julia) and/or libraries for quantitative analysis (e.g., pandas, scikit-learn, tensorflow, torch).

 

Salary and Benefits

The UC academic salary scales set the minimum pay determined by rank and step at appointment. See the following table(s) for the current salary scale(s) for this position: https://www.ucop.edu/academic-personnel-programs/_files/2025-26/represented-july-2025-scales/t24-b.pdf.  A reasonable estimate for this position is $85,000 - $125,000.
 

For information on the comprehensive benefits package offered by the University visit:  

http://ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/compensation-and-benefits/index.html 

 

To Apply

Please apply here on AP Recuit: https://aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05185. Submit the following documents:

  • A cover letter that clearly describes your relevant skills and experiences. Please specifically highlight how you meet the minimum and desired qualifications listed above.
  • A CV or resume
  • Links to a repository of code that you have written that demonstrates your programming expertise
  • Contact information for three professional references, ideally one or more from an academic institution

The application deadline is November 3 and anticipated start date of the position is December 2025.  Please address inquiries to Sabrina Spatny, Operations and People Associate, Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA), University of California Berkeley, CEGA_hr@berkeley.edu.  
 

The University of California is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, age or protected veteran status. For the complete University of California nondiscrimination and affirmative action policy see http://policy.ucop.edu/doc/4000376/NondiscrimAffirmAct. 

 

The Department is interested in candidates who will contribute to diversity and equal opportunity in higher education through their work. Please note CEGA can only hire individuals who are eligible to work in the US, either through an Optional Practical Training (OPT) visa or as a result of being US citizen or permanent resident.