Greetings privacy folks,
Privacy engineering is an exciting and interdisciplinary role that requires a unique blend of skills and expertise to build privacy features into the design of systems and software.
But what does it take to be a privacy engineer?
While there's no single truth about the precise requirements for this role, there are definitely some common themes.
To become a privacy engineer, you'll need to develop a deep understanding of privacy regulations and best practices, as well as technical proficiency in areas such as cryptography, data anonymization, and risk assessment. And as privacy concerns become increasingly important for consumers and businesses alike, developing privacy engineering skills can be a valuable asset in today's digital landscape.
The main responsibilities of a Privacy Engineer, as highlighted in job postings, encompass a range of tasks such as guiding engineering teams in transparent data practices, managing privacy concerns, developing new privacy tools, contributing to strategy and policy initiatives, addressing privacy incidents, and fostering interdisciplinary communication. A good Privacy Engineer possesses creative problem-solving skills, identifies vulnerabilities, prioritizes user accessibility, tailors privacy solutions for diverse users, selects appropriate privacy technologies, and effectively communicates data processing details to users.
In terms of job prospects, leading tech companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Duck Duck Go, Brave, and Mozilla are actively seeking Privacy Engineers, each with slightly varied job responsibilities.
There are certain frameworks such as NIST, and there are amazing books written by Nishant Data Privacy: A Runbook for Engineers, Michellde Denedy The Privacy Engineer's Manifesto: Getting from Policy to Code to QA to Value, Carnegie Mellon Privacy Engineering Program, etc. are amazing to start your privacy engineering program in baby steps.
Also defining privacy engineering has been a problem for over 20 years now. However, we are closer than ever thanks to many organizations such as IAPP, OpenMined, NIST, etc.
IAPP recently launched Privacy Engineering roles which are included in 6 sub-roles that act as privacy engineers in various hats within organizations.
So, without further ado, I present to you a sheet that will help aspiring privacy engineers like me create their own learning paths. It's based on various job postings and information received from privacy engineers, and it's organized under soft skills, compliance skills, technical skills, and education.
My ask to privacy engineers is to feel free to directly edit the sheet or share your feedback in the comments.
Let’s collaborate to create a single source of truth to guide aspiring privacy engineers to know where to invest in their skills development.
The sheet is editable so feel free to reach out to the privacy engineers in your network for help and guidance to edit the document however you like.
As you can see, Privacy engineering requires so many different skill sets that its nearly impossible to have it all. But you can specialize in certain aspects and as the job postings for privacy engineering will definitely soar in the coming decades you can find a job in any of the roles under privacy engineering.