Exploring a Career Pivot from Big Tech

Context

I’m an EA working at a large tech company, with several years of experience in a niche technical stack (kept vague for anonymity). Over the past six months, I’ve been reflecting deeply on how to make my career more impactful. I’d love advice, connections, or even words of encouragement as I navigate this transition.

Cause Areas

I’m most drawn to biosecurity, though I remain open to alternative proteins, climate and animal welfare (ranked in decreasing order of interest). My current sense is that the main bottlenecks in the latter two areas are policy-related rather than technical. I’ve mostly ruled out AI safety, since it feels saturated and somewhat misaligned with my background.

I’m most interested in pivoting to biosecurity, but I haven’t completely ruled out other cause areas such as climate or animal welfare. However, I do think that the bottleneck in both climate and animal welfare are more policy related than technical. I should probably mention that I’ve (mostly) ruled out AI Safety as a cause area because 1) I feel as though this area is saturated and 2) I lack relevant experience. 

Current Dilemmas

I’m not sure how to pivot to biosecurity. I could pivot to cybersecurity, and apply those skills to biosecurity down the line. I figured I could do an internal transfer to a cybersecurity role at my current company. However, even that has proved difficult, since most managers want someone with backend development experience. 

Also I’m having trouble splitting my time between interview prep, applying for jobs, and research cause areas.  Part of me wonders if I should quit my job to focus fully on the transition, but I’d prefer to have a clearer plan first.

Key Uncertainties

• How transferable are cybersecurity skills to biosecurity?
  • It’s easy for me to identify people who do impactful work in biosecurity (e.g. Jeff Kaufman), however, I’m not so sure with cybersecurity. Though if I were to choose to work on policy, RAND has a few impactful roles that require cybersecurity experience:
    • Research Lead - AI Cyber Testing & Evaluation
    • Research Lead - AI Security Policy
    • Research Lead - Securing Frontier AI
• Which of the following directions would likely have the greatest impact (without over-optimizing)? Or does it depend on the cause area?
  • Policy work
  • Direct work (e.g. on biosecurity)
  • Earning/Founding to Give 

Call to Action

I would appreciate any advice at all, but here are some specific asks for anyone reading this

• Help answering key uncertainties
• Prioritize outstanding action items from the list below
• Collaboration opportunities (e.g. to work on something biosecurity related or otherwise)
• Connections with people working on biosecurity, cybersecurity, or policy work (e.g. someone at RAND or Horizon Institute)
• How to make the most of EAG NY this weekend (I have already set up some meetings with people working in biosecurity

Appendix

Concrete steps/action items

Here’s a list of what I’ve done: 

• Advising session through 80,000 hours (TLDR was  that I was advised to just start applying to roles I find impactful/interesting) Applied to TechCongress fellowship (rejected after initial application)
• Applied to AIM Founding to Give program (rejected from final round)
• Applied to TechCongress fellowship (rejected after initial application)
• Attempt to find Biosecurity related projects (reached out to authors of this post - no response)
• Advising session through Probably Good:
  • There were a few takeaways/action items, most of which are included below. I’ve more/less done the following:
    • Internal job search for cybersecurity roles
    • Small volunteer opportunities with relevant organizations
      • Horizon Public Service (N/A?)
      • CIVAI (reached out to Lucas Hansen - need to follow up)
    • Identify and reach out to people currently working in roles he aspires to, particularly those with similar backgrounds to his own
      • Lucas Hansen (see above)
      • Lincoln Quirk
      • Jeff Kaufman (made a comment on blog post here)
    • Write a blog post on the EA Forum about his perspective as a tech engineer exploring biosecurity (this)

Here’s a list of I plan to do, but just haven’t gotten around to do doing just yet

• Creating a spreadsheet mapping out potential career paths and roles in biosecurity, climate tech, and cybersecurity.
• Doing a reverse mapping of organizations doing impactful work and reaching out to people that work there
• Apply for Career development and transition funding from OpenPhil (need to figure out concrete biosecurity projects to work on)
• Attend EAG NYC
• Apply for RAND Technology and Security Policy Fellowship