Privacy

The short version: reading this site takes no account and sets no cookie; it shows no ads and never sells personal information. Two things are optional, and they are the only ones that keep personal information: an account, which lets you save roles and track your progress on the learning map, and the monthly Index email. What follows is the complete picture.

Who we are

AI Career Atlas is operated by Jun Zhang, a sole proprietor trading as AI Career Atlas, based in California, United States. For the purposes of the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation, that is the data controller for the personal data described on this page, and the person you reach at support@aicareeratlas.com. There are no employees and no offices; questions about your data reach one person directly.

What we collect

To read any page: nothing that identifies you — every page of content reads the same whether or not you are signed in, and there is no comment system. Analytics and server logs below say exactly what they record. The job data on the site is about companies' public job postings, not about people.

Analytics

We run a self-hosted instance of Umami, a cookieless analytics tool, to see which pages are read and which links are followed. It records aggregate counts — page views, referrers, country, browser and device class — and a few interaction events, such as which role family's postings were opened, that a page hit an error, or that a new account was created and whether with Google or an email link (counted once, on the page its first sign-in opens, with nothing about who it is). It sets no cookies, stores no IP addresses, never records what you type, and creates no identifier that follows you across days or sites. The script and its data are served from this site's own address and stored on infrastructure we operate; the data is not shared with or sold to anyone.

Where your data is, and who processes it

Stored in the EU. The site runs on servers we operate at Hetzner in Falkenstein, Germany — the web server; its database, with the job-posting data, the accounts and what they save, and the newsletter list; its logs (below); and the mail service that hands our emails to Amazon. Backups of that database, encrypted at rest, are kept in Cloudflare R2 object storage in Europe (its Western Europe location), each for at most 56 days. The site's fonts (IBM Plex) are copied onto our servers when the site is built and served from this site's own address, so no page asks Google, or any other font service, for anything.

Processed in the United States, by these companies only, each only for the jobs named:

• Cloudflare carries every request to our servers, over its network and the Cloudflare Tunnel into them, and may process standard technical data (IP address, user agent) transiently to deliver pages and protect against abuse; it also stores the encrypted backups of our database, in Cloudflare R2.
• Amazon Web Services delivers our emails — the sign-in links and the newsletter — through Amazon Simple Email Service (below).
• Google, only if you choose to sign in with Google, confirms who you are (below); and YouTube, a Google service, plays a learning-map video only once you press it (below).

Each acts under its own privacy policy. For data from the EEA or the UK, each relies on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.

Server logs

The web server and the nightly data job write logs so we can see when something breaks. A log record holds the time, which service and which server process wrote it and the version of the site that was running, and — when a page fails — the address requested (with any filters in it) and its HTTP method, which part of the site failed, the error itself and the reference number the error page shows you, and Cloudflare's id for the request, which lets us match our record to Cloudflare's record of the same request. A log record never holds your IP address, your browser's user-agent string or anything else that says who asked — the exceptions are the few records described with accounts and the newsletter below, which hold an email address or an account's id, and say so. A request to the tool we use to send the monthly email that comes without our key is refused and writes a record of that tool's address, why it was refused (no key, a wrong key, or none set up on our side) and how many such requests there were in that minute — never who sent it or any part of the key it carried. The site keeps no log of who visited which page. Logs are kept in a log store on those same servers and deleted after 90 days.

Accounts

An account is optional: no page of content needs one, and every one reads the same without it. It exists so you can save things. You sign in with a link we email you, or with your Google account.

What we keep, in the site's database on our servers at Hetzner:

• Your account: a random id for it, your email address, when you first confirmed that address, and when you created the account. If you sign in with Google: the name on your Google account and the address of its profile picture, as Google shares them.
• How you sign in: if you use Google, which Google account is linked (Google's id for it) and the details of that link — its type, what it lets us see, and when Google's permission expires. We never store the tokens Google issues. A sign-in link we have emailed and you have not used yet is kept as your address, a one-way hash of the link's code and when it expires; it is deleted once used, and expired ones are cleared automatically.
• What you save: the roles you save — the posting's id, and its title and company as they were when you saved it, and when; the steps and resources you mark on the learning map — which one, the state you chose, and when you last changed it; and your interests — the role families, skills and companies you pick, and when you last changed them.
• If you also subscribe to the newsletter with the same address — with a form on the site, or with the button on your account page, which sends the same confirmation email — the subscription is linked to your account.

Cookies. Signing in sets one cookie, the session cookie: it holds an encrypted token with your account's id and email address, and lasts 90 days from the last time the site read it — using the site keeps you signed in, and signing out removes it. While you sign in, two short-lived cookies protect the sign-in form against forgery and remember which page to return to. These are strictly necessary for the account you asked for, so there is no consent banner; the site sets no other cookie, and none at all for a reader who does not sign in.

Who else is involved. The sign-in email is delivered like the newsletter: through our mail service and Amazon Simple Email Service (below). If you sign in with Google, Google tells us your email address, the name on your Google account and its profile picture, under the Google Privacy Policy; we ask Google for nothing else.

Logs. The page a sign-in link opens writes a log record that says whether it passed you on and which sign-in method the link was for. Deleting an account writes one that holds the account's random id, not your address — and, if our mail service could not be told to forget the address, a second one with that id and what went wrong; so does a failure to link a new account to a newsletter subscription. If any email we send — a sign-in link or the newsletter — cannot be handed to our mail service, the record says which email it was, what went wrong and the address it was for, so we can see why. A periodic record counts the expired sign-in links cleared. These are deleted after 90 days, with the other logs.

How long, and your rights. We keep an account until you delete it. Signed in, Your data lets you download everything we hold on your account as one file, and delete the account: that removes the account, its sign-in links, everything you saved, and the newsletter subscription and send records for its address from the site's database at once, and we never bring a deleted account back. Backups of the database, in Cloudflare R2 in Europe, keep a copy of the deleted rows until they age out, at most 56 days later, and server logs age out on their own. For your other rights under the GDPR — to have your data corrected, to restrict or object to how we use it — write to us at the address below; you can also complain to your data protection authority.

Legal basis: providing the account you asked for, a contract with you (GDPR Art. 6(1)(b)).

Newsletter

The AI Hiring Index is also sent by email, once a month, to people who ask for it. Subscribing takes two steps: you enter your address, we email you a link, and you are on the list only once you press the button on the page that link opens.

What we keep, in the site's database on our servers at Hetzner: your email address; whether it is confirmed, unsubscribed or bouncing; where on the site you subscribed (the home page, an Index issue or your account page); the IP address the subscription request came from, as a record of your consent; when you subscribed, confirmed and last changed anything; and random codes that make the confirm and unsubscribe links work. For each monthly issue we also record that it was sent to your address, when, and the delivery service's id for the message, so that no issue reaches you twice.

Who delivers it. The emails are handed by a mail service we run on those same servers to Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon Web Services, in its us-east-1 region in the United States). Amazon receives your address and the message in order to deliver it, and tells us when an address bounces or its owner marks a message as spam; we then stop sending to it, and our mail service keeps that address on a do-not-send list so it is never mailed again — after you delete your account, only as a one-way hash, which recognises the address without storing it; Amazon keeps the address on its own do-not-send list as well. Amazon is a US company; for data from the EEA or the UK it relies on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and the European Commission's standard contractual clauses. Sign-in emails travel the same way.

Logs. Subscribing, confirming and unsubscribing each write a log record that holds the address, what happened (for example, that it was confirmed) and where the subscription came from, so we can see when signups fail; a bounce or complaint writes one that says what happened, without the address; and the mail service logs each message it hands to Amazon, with the address. Those records are deleted after 90 days, with the other logs.

How long, and how to leave. We keep your address for as long as you are subscribed. Every email has an unsubscribe link, plus a one-click unsubscribe that most mail apps show next to the sender. After you unsubscribe, or if the address bounces, its row stays, marked as such, so that it is never mailed again by mistake; to have it deleted entirely, delete your account under Your data if you have one, or write to us at the address below. We send the list nothing but the Index, and we never sell, rent or share it.

Legal basis: your consent, which you give by confirming and withdraw by unsubscribing (GDPR Art. 6(1)(a)).

Videos on the learning map

Some steps of the learning map include a video from its author's own YouTube channel. Until you press it, the page shows only the video's thumbnail, which your browser fetches from YouTube's image server (i.ytimg.com) — that request carries your IP address, as any image request does — and nothing else from YouTube loads and nothing is stored on your device. Pressing it loads YouTube's player from youtube-nocookie.com; from then on the player may store cookies and similar data (such as local storage) in your browser as part of playing the video, under Google's own policy. This site uses YouTube API Services to show these videos, so the Google Privacy Policy applies to what YouTube collects. We store nothing about which videos you open or watch.

Links to job postings

Every posting links to the employer's own careers page or job board. Once you follow one, that company's and its hiring software's privacy policies apply; we receive nothing back.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you can ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, have it corrected or deleted, restrict or object to how we use it, and take it elsewhere. With an account, the export and the deletion are yours to do at any time under Your data; for anything else, or without an account, write to us at the address below and we will answer within a month. You can also complain to your data protection authority.

Changes and contact

Material changes update the date at the top of this page. Questions about privacy are welcome at support@aicareeratlas.com — see the contact page.