April 3rd, 2024
The Tor Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization advancing human rights and freedoms by creating and deploying free and open source anonymity and privacy technologies, is seeking a User Research Coordinator with 4-7 years of related work experience to be a part of the User Experience & Design (UX) Team.
Are you passionate about making software usable and fun for all types of people? Do you want to coordinate user research for software that helps people protect their privacy and freedom online? If so, this may be the job for you.
This position will be an integral part of a small, "full stack" design team, encompassing the disciplines of UX, brand design, and ethical user research.
The team coordinates via IRC, email, GitLab, on audio/video calls, and in-person meetings once per year. In addition, this position will also require international travel at multiple points throughout the year.
A personal commitment to free and open source software, good communication and documentation skills, and passion for contributing to the greater good are all essential. At the Tor Project, we reject invasive data gathering practices and adhere to the principles of consent, respect, and empathy.
This is a full-time, remote position, which could be performed from most places in the world – please see below for the US sanctions & embargo disclaimer. The organization is also currently experimenting with a four day workweek.
The salary for this position ranges from $70,000 - $80,000 USD (based on candidate experience), and there is voluntary opt-in salary transparency for employees and contractors.
In this role, you will:
The ideal candidate for this job will have the following skills and experience:
In addition to:
If you feel that you meet most of these requirements or could meet them with a little time and support, we would love to hear from you!
A resumé, cover letter and portfolio featuring recent case studies is required. Please use the cover letter as an opportunity to tell us about how your experience relates to the job description and why you want to work at Tor.
The Tor Project’s workforce is inclusive, talented, and committed. We currently have a global paid and contract staff of around 50 developers and operational support people, plus many thousands of volunteers who contribute to our work world-wide. The Tor Project is funded in part by government research and development grants, and in part by individual, foundation, and corporate donations.
Tor is for everyone, and we are actively working to build a team that represents people from all over the world - people from diverse ethnic, national, and cultural backgrounds; people from all walks of life. We encourage people subject to systemic bias to apply, including people of color, indigenous people, LGBTQIA+ people, women, and any other person who is part of a group that is underrepresented in tech.
We have long-standing community guidelines and cultural norms. Our community is committed to creating an inclusive and welcoming environment. Please read more here:
The Tor Project has a competitive benefits package, including a generous PTO policy, 16 paid holidays per year (including the week between Christmas and New Years, when the office is closed), and flexible work schedule. Insurance benefits vary by employment status and country of residence.
Applicants must be authorized to work in the country in which they live, we cannot provide visa assistance for this position.
The Tor Project, Inc., is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer.
Notice: Due to U.S. sanctions and embargo regulations, The Tor Project, Inc. is not able to hire individuals with citizenship andresidency in certain countries, including but not limited to Russia, North Korea, Cuba, Iraq, China, Iran, and Syria.
The Tor Project, Inc, became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2006, but the idea of "onion routing" began in the mid 1990s.
Just like Tor users, the developers, researchers, and founders who've made Tor possible are a diverse group of people. But all of the people who have been involved in Tor are united by a common belief: internet users should have private access to an uncensored web.
In the 1990s, the lack of security on the internet and its ability to be used for tracking and surveillance was becoming clear, and in 1995, David Goldschlag, Mike Reed, and Paul Syverson at the U.S. Naval Research Lab (NRL) asked themselves if there was a way to create internet connections that don't reveal who is talking to whom, even to someone monitoring the network. Their answer was to create and deploy the first research designs and prototypes of onion routing.
The goal of onion routing was to have a way to use the internet with as much privacy as possible, and the idea was to route traffic through multiple servers and encrypt it each step of the way. This is still a simple explanation for how Tor works today.
In the early 2000s, Roger Dingledine, a recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate, began working on an NRL onion routing project with Paul Syverson. To distinguish this original work at NRL from other onion routing efforts that were starting to pop up elsewhere, Roger called the project Tor, which stood for The Onion Routing. Nick Mathewson, a classmate of Roger's at MIT, joined the project soon after.
From its inception in the 1990s, onion routing was conceived to rely on a decentralized network. The network needed to be operated by entities with diverse interests and trust assumptions, and the software needed to be free and open to maximize transparency and decentralization. That's why in October 2002 when the Tor network was initially deployed, its code was released under a free and open software license. By the end of 2003, the network had about a dozen volunteer nodes, mostly in the U.S., plus one in Germany.
Recognizing the benefit of Tor to digital rights, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)began funding Roger's and Nick's work on Tor in 2004. In 2006, the Tor Project, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, was founded to maintain Tor's development.
In 2007, the organization began developing bridges to the Tor network to address censorship, such as the need to get around government firewalls, in order for its users to access the open web.
Tor began gaining popularity among activists and tech-savvy users interested in privacy, but it was still difficult for less-technically savvy people to use, so starting in 2005, development of tools beyond just the Tor proxy began. Development of Tor Browser began in 2008.
With Tor Browser having made Tor more accessible to everyday internet users and activists, Tor was an instrumental tool during the Arab Spring beginning in late 2010. It not only protected people's identity online but also allowed them to access critical resources, social media, and websites which were blocked.
The need for tools safeguarding against mass surveillance became a mainstream concern thanks to the Snowden revelations in 2013. Not only was Tor instrumental to Snowden's whistleblowing, but content of the documents also upheld assurances that, at that time, Tor could not be cracked.
People's awareness of tracking, surveillance, and censorship may have increased, but so has the prevalence of these hindrances to internet freedom. Today, the network has thousands of relays run by volunteers and millions of users worldwide. And it is this diversity that keeps Tor users safe.
We, at the Tor Project, fight every day for everyone to have private access to an uncensored internet, and Tor has become the world's strongest tool for privacy and freedom online.
But Tor is more than just software. It is a labor of love produced by an international community of people devoted to human rights. The Tor Project is deeply committed to transparency and the safety of its users.