Google Looking for "Red Team" Data Privacy Engineer

Google is looking to boost its team of privacy-focused software engineers, according to a new job posting.

The Mountain View-based position is for a data privacy engineer within Google's "Privacy Red Team."

"Specifically, you will work as member of our Privacy Red Team to independently identify, research, and help resolve potential privacy risks across all of our products, services, and business processes in place today," according to the listing.

The new hire must also "help ensure that our products are designed to the highest standards and are operated in a manner that protects the privacy of our users."

The posting comes shortly after the FTC hit Google with a $22.5 million fine to settle charges that it misrepresented how users of Apple's Safari browser were having their Internet activity tracked.

According to the complaint, Google placed advertising cookies on the computers of Safari users who visited sites within Google's DoubleClick advertising network. Google, however, had wrongly told Safari users they would be opted out of such tracking thanks to Safari's default settings.

According to Kaspersky Lab's Dennis Fisher, the concept of a red team has been used in security for decades and often involves "small teams of experts trying to break a given software application, get into a network or circumvent a security system as part of a penetration test or a similar engagement."

"But Google's concept of building an internal team to look critically at engineering and other decisions in the company's products and services that could involve user privacy risks is perhaps a unique one," Fisher wrote in a blog post.

The search giant might want to change the perception of its privacy practices and improve how its products handle user data, Fisher speculated.

In a statement, a Google spokeswoman said "We are always on the lookout for talented people in a variety of roles."