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Junior/Assistant/Associate Specialist - Center for Effective Global Action

Position overview

Position title: Privacy Engineer
Salary range: 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. The current base salary range for this position is $55,000-$88,000. "Offscale" salaries, which yield compensation that is higher than the published systemwide salary at the designated rank and step, are offered when necessary to meet competitive conditions

Percent time: 100

Anticipated start: December 2025

Position duration: 2 years

Application Window
Open date: October 15, 2025

Next review date: Wednesday, Oct 29, 2025 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)
Apply by this date to ensure full consideration by the committee.

Final date: Thursday, Nov 20, 2025 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)
Applications will continue to be accepted until this date, but those received after the review date will only be considered if the position has not yet been filled.

Position description

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.

CEGA seeks a talented Junior/Assistant/Associate Specialist 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

Department: https://cega.berkeley.edu/

Qualifications
Basic qualifications (required at time of application)
Bachelor's Degree or equivalent international degree or enrolled in a Bachelor's Degree or equivalent international degree program

Additional qualifications (required at time of start)
Bachelor's Degree or equivalent international degree

Preferred qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's Degree or equivalent international degree in Engineering, Computer or Information Science, Mathematics, or a related technical field.
• 2+ years of professional experience with object-oriented programming.
• Expertise in Python, as well as at least one other object-oriented programming language (such Java/Scala or C/C++) and SQL.
• Experience with at least one of the following PETs: differential privacy, homomorphic encryption, secure multiparty computation, private set. -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).

Application Requirements

Document requirements

• Curriculum Vitae - Your most recently updated C.V.
• Cover Letter
• Repository of Code - Repository of code written that demonstrates programming expertise.
• Research Statement - Please discuss research accomplishments and proposed plans. This can include, for example, your publication record, awards, presentations, inclusive research practices that promote the excellence of your research, and areas for future research.
  (Optional)

Reference requirements

• 3-5 required (contact information only)
• Ideally one out of three references should come from an academic institution.

Apply link: https://aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05185

Help contact: sabrinaspatny@berkeley.edu

About UC Berkeley

UC Berkeley is committed to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in our public mission of research, teaching, and service, consistent with UC Regents Policy 4400 and University of California Academic Personnel policy (APM 210 1-d). These values are embedded in our Principles of Community, which reflect our passion for critical inquiry, debate, discovery and innovation, and our deep commitment to contributing to a better world. Every member of the UC Berkeley community has a role in sustaining a safe, caring and humane environment in which these values can thrive.

The University of California, Berkeley is an Equal Opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, or protected veteran status.

For more information, please refer to the University of California's Affirmative Action and Nondiscrimination in Employment Policy and the University of California's Anti-Discrimination Policy.

In searches when letters of reference are required all letters will be treated as confidential per University of California policy and California state law. Please refer potential referees, including when letters are provided via a third party (i.e., dossier service or career center), to the UC Berkeley statement of confidentiality prior to submitting their letter.

As a University employee, you will be required to comply with all applicable University policies and/or collective bargaining agreements, as may be amended from time to time. Federal, state, or local government directives may impose additional requirements.

As a condition of employment, the finalist will be required to disclose if they are subject to any final administrative or judicial decisions within the last seven years determining that they committed any misconduct.

• "Misconduct" means any violation of the policies or laws governing conduct at the applicant's previous place of employment, including, but not limited to, violations of policies or laws prohibiting sexual harassment, sexual assault, or other forms of harassment or discrimination, as defined by the employer.
• UC Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment Policy
• UC Anti-Discrimination Policy
• APM - 035: Affirmative Action and Nondiscrimination in Employment

Job location
Berkeley, CA


To apply, visit https://aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05185