Tjerand is a Security and Cryptography Expert at the cybersecurity company Pone Biometrics and an Associate Professor at the Department of Information Security and Communication Technology at NTNU. His main interests are quantum-safe cryptography, privacy-preserving computation, and anonymous communications. In 2020, the Norwegian Data Protection Agency awarded Tjerand and his team the "Bult-in privacy" award for designing a private contact-tracing protocol used by more than 1 million Norwegians.