About Alethea
Founded in 2019, with the mission to protect the truth, Alethea is a tech company that detects and mitigates instances of disinformation and social media manipulation to help clients navigate the new digital reality. We protect clients from the threat of disinformation that targets brands, reputations, employee safety, or financial bottom lines through our industry-leading investigation and remediation services.
Please note that applicants must reside in the United States to be considered for this position. Alethea does not offer sponsorship employment benefits.
Position Summary
Alethea is seeking a Technical Investigator. In this role you will lead and conduct technical OSINT investigations into social media manipulation, information operations, and online threats targeting clients, and support client projects and briefings. You will need to be able to meet a dynamic set of client needs and think creatively, distilling large sets of social media data and other relevant information into actionable analysis to be used by a variety of stakeholders. As part of being a teammate at a startup, you will also help identify ways to improve investigative and operational processes and methodologies. This role will be a member of the Analysis team’s investigative division.
Responsibilities Include:
- Conduct technical investigations into inauthentic behavior, manipulation, and disinformation targeting our clients.
- Assist with complex investigations that require the input of junior analysts.
- Proactively hunt for and detect inauthentic activity by leveraging Alethea’s proprietary tech platform and open-source intelligence tools and techniques.
- Inform the design of Alethea’s tech platform and validate its threat detection models, using your knowledge of inauthentic behaviors and investigator workstreams.
- Participate in client meetings and brief your findings clearly and succinctly.
- Contribute to public-facing research in order to share new trends and methods with the broader research community and the public.
You are / have:
- 3+ years of experience as a technical analyst or investigator working on relevant issues (disinformation campaigns, information operations, online threat actor activity, online abuse, etc).
- Passionate about detecting and exposing malicious actors spreading disinformation and abuse online.
- Experienced with open-source intelligence (OSINT) research techniques.
- Background using network forensics and indicators of malicious actor behavior to identify and attribute inauthentic activity or abuse.
- Able to work with information from disparate sources and large data sets, and you have experience with data visualization tools.
- Experienced briefing verbally and writing on complex and disparate findings.
- Experienced prioritizing tasks, projects, and investigative needs, and executing with minimal direction or oversight.
- Comfortable with a fast-paced start-up environment that involves regular iteration and improvement of existing products and processes.
- A great teammate and you invite collaboration in your work.
Preferred Qualifications (not required):
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in a relevant discipline (e.g. social science, computer science, intelligence studies, etc.) or equivalent professional experience.
- Proficiency in SQL, Python, or another scripting language to facilitate scaled analysis and data manipulation.
- Deep knowledge of particular malicious online actors and their methods, and/or knowledge of regional information ecosystems, inside or outside the United States.
- Proficiency in a foreign language, especially Mandarin, Russian, Arabic, Persian, or Portuguese.
Note: This role involves potential exposure to sensitive or disturbing content, including but not limited to vulgar language and violent threats.
Compensation and Benefits
- Salary and stock options are negotiated based on experience.
- Healthcare at the gold-tier level, dental, and vision is fully funded by the employer. 50% of dependent coverage is provided by the employer.
- Unlimited vacation, sick leave, including office closure between Christmas and New Years, and extended holidays at Thanksgiving and the 4th of July.
- Employer sponsored 401k with a 3% match.
- Preference for candidates located in the vicinity of Alethea’s offices in Washington D.C. and New York.
Alethea is an equal opportunity employer that encourages people of all backgrounds, genders, ethnicities, abilities, and sexual orientations to apply. We are committed to being an inclusive place to work, while maintaining a workforce that represents the communities we serve.
