Job Description

Facebook is seeking a Research Scientist to join the Core Data Science team in Washington DC. Individuals in this role are expected to be comfortable working as a software engineer, data analyst, and scientist. Successful candidates for this role must also have a passion for social science research that deploys state-of-the-art methods from privacy and data security. They will work closely with external partners and social scientists to facilitate novel research as well as implement, design, and test privacy methods and related infrastructure.

Research Scientist, Privacy Research Responsibilities

* Understand how Facebook can support the research communitys use of existing Facebook datasets and identify opportunities for new datasets of interest to external social scientists.

* Enable external social science research: collaborate with internal Facebook teams to construct requirements for the release of data for external research, create designs to facilitate privacy-aware research, and build privacy preserving datasets for external use.

* Engage with privacy researchers inside and outside Facebook to identify the best methods for implementing privacy-preserving technologies that allow Facebook to meet commitments to our users and to regulators.

* Effectively document, defend, and communicate about Facebooks chosen privacy methods and approaches to both technical and non-technical audiences.

* Collaborate with Facebook software engineering teams to test, validate, and track privacy guarantees provided by privacy-aware systems and datasets.

* Draft technical papers explaining correct methods for statistical analysis and causal inference with differentially private datasets

* work with software engineering teams to implement packages to run such methods at Facebook scale.

* Implement and execute on research designs for social science research alongside academic partners. Collaborate on research reports and papers and participate actively in the academic community including presenting at conferences, promoting research programs, helping facilitate workshops, and reviewing proposals.

* Develop new privacy techniques as required for evolving use-cases, possibly including areas such as differential privacy for network analysis and machine learning or implementing a dataset validation serve.

* Responsible for partner outreach and communication with external social scientists.

Minimum Qualifications

* Statistics or Social Science PhD (or related area) with extensive publication record or proven track record of executing projects of high scientific value

* Familiarity with state-of-the-art practices and methodologies in data security and privacy such as differential privacy, zero knowledge proofs, secure multi-party computing, homomorphic encryption, etc.

* Practical experience applying at least one of the above methodologies or a related methodology from the data security and privacy discipline to enable or conduct privacy-preserving social science research

* Communication skills

* End-to-end experience assembling, manipulating, and analyzing data (including data extraction, cleaning, visualization, presentation, etc.) in SQL, R, and Python

* Must obtain work authorization in country of employment at the time of hire and maintain ongoing work authorization during employment

Locations

About the Facebook company

Facebook's mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. Through our family of apps and services, we're building a different kind of company that connects billions of people around the world, gives them ways to share what matters most to them, and helps bring people closer together. Whether we're creating new products or helping a small business expand its reach, people at Facebook are builders at heart. Our global teams are constantly iterating, solving problems, and working together to empower people around the world to build community and connect in meaningful ways. Together, we can help people build stronger communities we're just getting started.

Facebook is committed to providing reasonable support (called accommodations) in our recruiting processes for candidates with disabilities, long term conditions, mental health conditions or who are neurodivergent, and to candidates with sincerely held religious beliefs or requiring pregnancy related support. If you need support, please reach out to accommodations-ext@fb.com.