As we developed the Privacy Engineering Master's Program curriculum at Carnegie Mellon, we looked to what kinds of skills were companies looking for when they were advertising for privacy engineers, and we talked to people in companies.
There's actually kind of a wide range of skill sets that varies from company to company.
Fundamentally, first of all, privacy engineers need a good understanding of privacy, the basics of privacy law, privacy principles.
They need an understanding of technology.
They need to understand the privacy-specific algorithms.
They need to understand humans and how people interact with privacy-related technology.
And they also need to have a good ability to kind of spot problems, spot difficulties and problem-solve.
And so our curriculum really tries to address all of these things, as well as offering hands-on opportunities for students to kind of get their hands dirty working on a real-world privacy problem and getting experience with that.