Privacy and Civil Liberties Software Engineer, Internship
Palantir · New York, United States · 10y ago
InternshipOn-siteSoftware Engineering
A World-Changing Company
Palantir builds the world’s leading software for data-driven decisions and operations. By bringing the right data to the people who need it, our platforms empower our partners to develop lifesaving drugs, forecast supply chain disruptions, locate missing children, and more.
The Role
The Privacy and Civil Liberties (PCL) Engineering team is a interdisciplinary team of software engineers, forward-deployed engineers, designers, lawyers, and policy experts. The first of its kind in the tech industry, Palantir’s PCL team was formed 15+ years ago as a rejection of the prevailing view that privacy protections must be sacrificed to national security interest. Today, the mission of the PCL team goes far beyond civil liberties protections, and our work challenges other false tradeoffs between operational effectiveness and the defining values of our society: Effective military operations should not be at odds with protecting civilians and upholding the Law of Armed Conflict. Deploying AI with scale and speed should never compromise safety, reliability, and governance. The PCL team builds software and forward deploys to ensure that our customers can pursue their hardest operational challenges while keeping ethical imperatives in plain sight. You can read more about the team on the Palantir blog here.
As a PCL Engineer, you will be responsible for designing and developing full-stack software products for privacy, data protection, AI governance, and accountability in Palantir’s software platforms. You may build security and governance primitives in our platform, applications for auditors, user-facing workflows for AI governance, internal tools for data protection, or something new all-together to help our customers address their next set of challenges. In every case, the software that you build will directly help our customers both carry out their missions more effectively and better meet their legal and ethical obligations. As part of this role, your efforts will be informed by collaborations with technical and non-technical teammates to understand our customers’ key challenges. Your technical approaches will entail engaging with and even helping to shape the latest developments in law and policy.
The skills and background of successful candidates may vary highly, but curiosity, grit, and a drive to run toward hard socio-technical problems are critical for our team. We’re looking for engineers who are passionate about addressing real-world challenges and empowering our customers to carry out their workflows both effectively and responsibly.
As a PCL Engineer, you will be responsible for designing and developing full-stack software products for privacy, data protection, AI governance, and accountability in Palantir’s software platforms. You may build security and governance primitives in our platform, applications for auditors, user-facing workflows for AI governance, internal tools for data protection, or something new all-together to help our customers address their next set of challenges. In every case, the software that you build will directly help our customers both carry out their missions more effectively and better meet their legal and ethical obligations. As part of this role, your efforts will be informed by collaborations with technical and non-technical teammates to understand our customers’ key challenges. Your technical approaches will entail engaging with and even helping to shape the latest developments in law and policy.
The skills and background of successful candidates may vary highly, but curiosity, grit, and a drive to run toward hard socio-technical problems are critical for our team. We’re looking for engineers who are passionate about addressing real-world challenges and empowering our customers to carry out their workflows both effectively and responsibly.
Core Responsibilities
As an PCL Engineer Intern, you’ll work in small teams with minimal supervision and own end-to-end execution of high stakes projects. No two projects are the same: you might work as a software engineer improving core products in our platform, as a forward-deployed engineering using our platform to improve our customers workflows, or as a policy researcher understanding the impacts of the latest developments in law and policy. PCL Engineer Interns are treated just like full time PCL Engineers, with significant freedom and ownership over their work. Interns take responsibility for real-world projects and outcomes that our customers rely on.
Our Principles
- PCL Impact: We work on challenging problems at the intersection of technology and ethics. We reject the idea that technology alone is the appropriate fit for every problem, especially socio-technical challenges, and we work to understand where our customers can better leverage technology to improve accountability, governance, privacy and related fundamental rights. We often take on projects that are completely novel and often resist simple framings, as long as we believe pursuing the work will change the world for the better.
- Ownership: We see projects through from beginning to end, working through any obstacles we may encounter, using an array of engineering tools that are best suited for the task at hand. We trust each other to effectively handle time and priorities and give people the space to think for themselves.
- Collaboration: We work internally with people from a variety of backgrounds — such as forward-deployed engineers, deployment strategists, product teams, and lawyers. We also work externally with our customers, often on site, to understand and tackle their problems.
What We Value
- Interest in both understanding the impact of technology in society and working to address it
- Ability to continuously learn, work independently, and make decisions with minimal direction
- Ability to collaborate in teams of technical and non-technical individuals, and comfortable working in a constantly evolving environment with dynamic objectives and iteration with users
- An eagerness to creatively solve technical problems with data structures, storage systems, cloud infrastructure, front-end frameworks, and other technical tools
- Experience or curiosity in any of the following domains is a plus: privacy, data protection, AI governance, AI testing & evaluation, national security, technology policy, technology ethics
What We Require
- Engineering background, preferred in fields such as Computer Science, Mathematics, Software Engineering, Physics, and Data Science
- Proficiency with one or more programming languages, such as Python, Java, C++, TypeScript/JavaScript, or similar
- Must be planning on graduating in 2027. This should be your final internship before graduating.
Salary
The salary range for this position is estimated to be $6,250/month. Further note that total compensation for this position will be determined by each individual's relevant qualifications, work experience, skills, and other factors. This estimate excludes the value of any benefits offered; and the potential future value of any long-term incentives.
Life at Palantir
We want every Palantirian to achieve their best outcomes, that’s why we celebrate individuals’ strengths, skills, and interests, from your first interview to your longterm growth, rather than rely on traditional career ladders. Paying attention to the needs of our community enables us to optimize our opportunities to grow and helps ensure many pathways to success at Palantir. Promoting health and well-being across all areas of Palantirians’ lives is just one of the ways we’re investing in our community. Learn more at Life at Palantir and note that our offerings may vary by region.
In keeping consistent with Palantir’s values and culture, we believe employees are “better together” and in-person work affords the opportunity for more creative outcomes. Therefore, we encourage employees to work from our offices to foster connectivity and innovation. Many teams do offer hybrid options (WFH a day or two a week), allowing our employees to strike the right trade-off for their personal productivity. Based on business need, there are a few roles that allow for “Remote” work on an exceptional basis. If you are applying for one of these roles, you must work from the state in which you are employed. If the posting is specified as Onsite, you are required to work from an office.
If you want to empower the world's most important institutions, you belong here. Palantir values excellence regardless of background. We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer for all, including but not limited to Veterans and those with disabilities. Palantir is committed to making the application and hiring process accessible to everyone and will provide a reasonable accommodation for those living with a disability. If you need an accommodation for the application or hiring process, please reach out and let us know how we can help.
Please note that you will never be asked to submit a payment or share financial information to participate in our interview process. If you suspect that you've been contacted by a scammer, we recommend you cease all communication with the individual and consider reporting them to the relevant authorities, such as the US FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).
If you would like to understand more about how your personal data will be processed by Palantir, please see our Privacy Policy.
If you would like to understand more about how your personal data will be processed by Palantir, please see our Privacy Policy.