Impactful jobs for computer science degree graduates

Considering a computer science degree, currently studying, or already graduated? This guide will take you through some of the most promising career paths you could enter with a background in computer science.

These aren’t just any careers. At Probably Good, we believe your career is one of the most significant opportunities you have to make a positive difference. With this in mind, in this article, we’ll explore some of the most impactful careers where a computer science degree can open doors and potentially offer unique advantages.

Software development for good

Software development (or software engineering) is one of the most common career paths for computer science graduates. It’s also one that we think can be highly impactful for the world, if you’re able to take the right job.

In general, the work of a software engineer involves designing, coding, testing, and maintaining software – whether this be programs, apps, websites, or backend systems that keep organizations and industries running smoothly.

By software development for good, we mean working as a software engineer to develop products and services that improve the world. These may be products that directly benefit users, like saving them money or improving their mental or physical health. But they could also be things that help others to help others, like software that helps charities be more productive, or helps governments spend their money more effectively.

Computer science is among the best degrees you can take if you want to work as a software engineer (alongside other closely related subjects, including software engineering). You’ll learn the skills needed for work in quite a few areas of software development, meaning you’ll be a good candidate for entry-level roles in many organizations.

How much impact could you have?

Unsurprisingly, the impact you’ll be able to have in software development depends almost entirely on the kind of software you help develop, and what it’ll be used for. If you want to have the highest impact, it’s a good idea to think about what kind of services can help solve important global problems.

Some software is able to significantly help people at an impressive scale. One great example is Wave, a company that offers low-fee financial transactions in various African countries. By offering much lower fees than more established companies, it’s likely saved many millions of total dollars for people living in low-income regions. Another is MindEase, an evidence-based mental health app that’s been shown to be highly effective in reducing anxiety for users. 

Because of this, there are many ways that software can be put to good use to help solve important problems, such as work in biosecurity to detect dangerous pathogens, or using software to forecast extreme weather events. More broadly, software is an important part of how any organization functions – whether it’s productivity tools, task management software, websites, donation platforms, or more specialist programs. Improving these tools can help organizations doing good for the world operate even more effectively. Because of this, this career path is one that’s likely to be relevant to whichever problem you want to work on.

Naturally, this career path will require you to make tough choices about where to work and which roles to take. Software development is an enormous global industry, and only some of the opportunities available will offer a promising chance of positive impact. 

Software development salaries

In the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports an average salary of $131,450 for software developers as of 2024. The top 10% of earners receive more than $211,000.

Getting started in software development

Here are a few practical ideas for actions you can take now to test your personal fit and upskill for software engineering careers.

• Start learning to code. There are a huge number of free online courses that are great for learning the fundamentals of software development, such as CodeCademy and FreeCodeCamp. There are many coding languages you can learn. Python is often recommended as a good starter language, as it’s relatively simple and widely used. JavaScript and HTML are the two most popular languages. But, if you’re just wanting to dip your toes into this path, we’d recommend not getting too caught up in choosing what to learn – it’s more important to just get started.
• Get familiar with AI tools. Software engineers are making increasing use of AI coding programs (with programs like GitHub’s Copilot). These will likely only increase in competence and usage, so it’s worth trying them out now and getting a feel for them.

You can also consider pursuing an internship or fellowship related to software development, which can be available both during or after your degree. We’ve included a few below:

Technical AI safety

Work in AI technical safety focuses on ensuring artificial intelligence systems behave in ways that align with human values and goals, particularly as AI advances to more powerful and autonomous systems. 

This field is broadly divided into two kinds of work: empirical and theoretical. Empirical AI safety work involves studying existing AI models, designing experiments, and developing tools to improve robustness, typically requiring expertise in machine learning and software engineering. 

Theoretical AI safety examines high-level questions about agency, decision-making, and long-term risks associated with advanced AI, drawing from mathematics and philosophy. With a background in computer science, it’s likely you’ll be more drawn to empirical AI safety work, rather than theoretical.

Technical AI safety roles are available in a few kinds of organization:

• AI Safety research institutes, like the Center for AI Safety, FAR AI, and Redwood Research focus exclusively on this research.
• Academia also facilitates AI safety research, with some universities hosting dedicated teams, like the Center for Human-Compatible AI at UC Berkeley, or the Krueger Lab at Cambridge.
• AI development companies like OpenAI, DeepMind, or Anthropic, typically have safety-focused teams and personnel (although there are some concerns about their true commitment to AI safety).

The work you do is likely to vary between these organization types. At AI development companies, you’ll likely spend time working on testing the safety of upcoming AI models. In academia and AI safety research institutes, you might focus more on fundamental issues related to safety that can be generalized to multiple models. However, there will also be plenty of overlap.

A computer science degree or major is probably the best background you can have for AI safety roles, at least for the empirical side of AI safety (which is where most of the jobs are). In a computer science degree, you’ll almost certainly be able to take courses on machine learning, which forms the bedrock of current AI models.

However, it’s also worth noting that if you want a more senior lead research role in the future, you’ll most likely also need a PhD.

How much impact could you have?

AI is set to be a hugely transformative technology. As we’ve argued at length elsewhere, AI could be a driver of unprecedented innovation, but the risks of unchecked development are equally significant. Without proper safeguards, AI could lead to large-scale harms, injustices—and even truly catastrophic consequences. 

Technical AI safety offers one of the most direct ways to mitigate these risks. There’s a host of important questions you could try to tackle in this path. For instance, you might work on interpretability – our ability to decipher how AI models really work, helping our efforts to effectively supervise them. Alternatively, you might work on reducing AI’s vulnerability to “adversarial” attacks, where users trick AI systems into performing unintended behaviors for potentially harmful purposes. 

Though we’re unsure of the best route or most impactful problems to address within technical AI safety, our sense is that this can be an incredibly impactful path for people who are a good fit.

That said, pursuing a career in AI safety comes with challenges. While some technical issues may be solvable with existing methods, the deeper, more fundamental concerns in AI safety remain complex and difficult. This might make you less confident about having a positive impact in this path, even though AI safety is an important field.

Our sense is also that personal fit is probably very important for how promising AI safety careers might be for you. Your ability to make an impact in this path may depend on your ability to be at the forefront of a complex new technology – so a high degree of interest and ability are helpful.

Technical AI safety salaries

In the US, Glassdoor reports a median salary of $154,856 as of 2025 for machine learning engineers. Jobs in AI development companies are often significantly higher than this average.

Getting started in AI safety

Here are a couple of practical ideas for actions you can take now to test your personal fit and upskill for AI safety careers.

• Take an AI safety course. BlueDot Impact’s AI Safety Fundamentals course is a great introduction that doesn’t require a technical background. For those with more experience (such as those already with a computer science degree), this reading list covers a lot of technical ground relating to AI safety.
• Learn relevant coding skills. Learning coding is going to be important for any kind of software work, but if you’re interested in AI, you can be a little more specific about what you learn. Python is said to be the most common language used in machine learning, so may be a great place to start. Codecademy and FreeCodeCamp are two free places to learn Python, but many others exist.

Earning to give

One way to have a great positive impact, whatever career you’re in, is to give money to effective charities, which can do impressive work with your donations. 

Going further than this, you can seek higher-paying jobs just to give more away – known as earning to give. This might not be the most intuitive way to have an impact, but we think it could actually be one of the best ways to help others, provided you’re well-placed to earn a significant salary.

We highlight earning to give here because computer science offers among the best earning potential of any degree subject. Software developers, for example, get a median salary of over $130,000 in the US, around double the US median salary and in the top 1% of global wealth.

If you’re able to get a job at a top tech company (for instance, at a ‘FAANG’ organization), salaries are often much higher than this. In other regions, salaries may be lower than in the US, but these kinds of roles are still likely to offer much higher salaries than the national average, wherever you are.

How much impact could you have?

In short, your impact in this path will be determined by how much you’re able to give and where you give.

One part of this is obvious – the more money you have, the more money you can give away to great causes (and the more impact you can have!).

The second part might be less obvious – but it’s no less important. In fact, deciding which charity to give your money to will often be more important than how much you give. The truth is, some charities can do much more good with the money you give them than others. The most effective charities can achieve many times more positive impact per dollar spent than an average charity.

But how much good could you actually do? Let’s say you earn a salary of $50,000 – close to the median US salary – and you want to give away 10% of your income to great causes. Here are just a few things you could achieve with a $5,000 donation:

• Save a child’s life through funding Evidence Action’s chlorine dispenser program that helps sanitize water in regions without easy access to clean water. 
• Double the annual household income for five families through GiveDirectly, who provide direct cash transfers for people in extreme poverty.
• Fund a highly effective climate organization like the Clean Air Task Force, who have influenced the uptake of significant climate action by the US and members of the COP. 
• Fund important research and advocacy to combat the most important risks from emerging technologies, like artificial intelligence and biotechnology, through an expert-managed fund that finds the most promising recipients for the money.
• Prevent 3,000 children from experiencing lead poisoning through the Lead Exposure Elimination Project, which helps governments reduce the prevalence of toxic lead paint.

Naturally, these are simplified estimates – but they’re a good indicator of what the best charities can achieve with your money. Because of this, choosing the organizations you want to donate to is a crucial part of your impact within earning to give; get it right, and you can do a huge amount of good.

Added to this, most of the impact you’ll have through earning to give is counterfactual; if you land a high-paying job, it’s unlikely the next-best candidate would have similar altruistic intentions, meaning the money you give wouldn’t have been donated otherwise. This makes this a very promising path for people able to sustain their altruistic motivation over the long term whilst pursuing a high-paying career.

Other relevant careers

The careers explored above are ones that may be particularly advantageous to explore for people with a computer science degree or major. Here, we’ll give a few quick extra examples of careers that may also be a good fit.

For-profit entrepreneurship

Starting a business may not strike you as the first choice for a career with social impact, but we think this can be promising for two reasons. One is that it’s a strong option for effective giving; if your company is successful, you may be able to give significant amounts to highly impactful charities, or even help to fund new ones.

Businesses can also have a positive impact by providing products and services that directly help people, like the examples of impactful software we talked about above. The for-profit model can provide a scale and reach that nonprofits find difficult to match. Of course, this comes with tradeoffs, as financial success and social impact don’t always align perfectly.

Computer science is perhaps one of the most valuable backgrounds to have for someone who is also entrepreneurially-minded. A large share of the most successful companies in the world are technology and software-driven. The same is true of “unicorn” businesses – startups with a value over $1 billion. 

However, there are risks to this path and a high chance of failure – around 90% of tech startups fail. And similar to earning to give, there’s a chance you might lose your initial altruistic values in a for-profit environment. But for those who think they’ll be able to sustain their good intentions over the long term, this can be a highly impactful path.

It’s also worth noting that although a technological background is an advantage for entrepreneurship, finding a co-founder who complements your skills is also crucial, especially if you’re still developing certain aspects of your entrepreneurial expertise.

Cyber security

Cyber security (often used interchangeably with information security) focuses on protecting digital systems, networks, and data from digital threats, protecting infrastructure and stopping sensitive information from falling into the wrong hands. 

This career path can help avoid important risks. For instance, there’s all sorts of information that we wouldn’t want to go to bad actors, like important government information, potential biosecurity risks, and AI weights. These could all be used for harm, so it’s important to keep them secure.

Cyber security salaries are also impressive. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports an average salary of $124,910 for information security analysts as of 2024.

However, if you want to have an impact in this path, it’s important to identify the areas where it’s most important to have cyber and information security. Many roles will be corporate, acting only for private interests. Because of this, it’s crucial to look for roles that help protect against large-scale public harms.

Roles for career capital

Regardless of the exact career path you go down, often the best way to have an impactful career over the long term is to focus on building useful skills, experience, and connections – known as career capital – early on in your career. Counterintuitively, this can mean taking jobs that aren’t directly impactful, but that might put you in a better place to take highly impactful jobs later on. Here are a few guidelines for opportunities that can offer strong career capital:

• Jobs that offer strong development. Some roles will let you develop skills more quickly than others. For instance, graduate schemes are often focused on giving you professional development, and early-stage startups can often offer more personal mentorship and opportunities to contribute. 
• Jobs in prestigious organizations. Roles in organizations with strong reputations for excellence will look impressive on your CV. They’ll also often give you experience in a high-performing environment, developing your general professional skills. If you’re able to land a role at a top tech company, for example, this may also be a good indicator that you’re skilled.
• Postgraduate education. Getting further education in computer science can often unlock more specialized opportunities. If you’re interested in being at the cutting edge of a new technology, then a PhD might be useful – though, for many people, it may still be better to spend this time getting practical work experience instead.

How does computer science compare to other degrees?

If you’re looking to have a career that lets you have an impressive positive impact and a comfortable salary, then computer science is a very strong degree subject to pick or major in. It’s a strong first step towards some highly impactful technical careers. If the career paths mentioned earlier resonate with you, pursuing computer science could be a great first step.

That said, while computer science excels in developing problem-solving and technical expertise, it may not emphasize skills like writing and broader communication. These skills are important both for performing well and getting hired in any career. So, if you study computer science (or have already done so), it may be worth investing time into developing these skills, too.

Expanding your options

It’s important to note that this is just a small selection of the careers that you’ll be in a good position to pursue with a degree in history. These are careers that we think have a potential for high positive impact and personal fulfillment, and your degree will put you in a good place to pursue these kinds of jobs.

However, don’t feel limited by these options. Careers are flexible and often take unexpected directions. Your degree will provide a great first step for the jobs discussed in this article, but your true list of options is much larger than it might seem. 
In fact, most graduates (as many as 74%) go into careers unrelated to their degree subject or major. Because of this, it’s well worth keeping an open mind and exploring other paths, too, even if they don’t immediately seem relevant to your education.

What should you do next?

Here are a few suggestions for steps you can take next to plan your career and find great opportunities.

• Read our career advice series for a step-by-step guide on building a career that’s good for you and the world.
• Find great job opportunities on our high-impact job board and explore great internships and fellowships.
• See our career profiles for a full list of impactful careers that we’ve researched.
• Consider applying to our free 1-1 advising service, where we can give you helpful, tailored career advice.