Principal Engineer

About AIWI

AIWI is an independent non-profit that exists to ensure that insiders at frontier AI companies can speak up safely and effectively when they see something that should be addressed. We do this by integrating the ecosystem of lawyers, AI researchers, AI advocacy organizations, journalists, regulators, and policymakers who can act on what they learn.

About the role

You will own all of AIWI's technology: architecture, implementation, deployment, security, and maintenance. Delivery will be hands-on and you will manage a budget for executing items defined on your roadmap. You will work closely with the founders, Head of Security, and translate requirements from our operations, research, and advocacy teams into working systems. The work is demanding, sensitive, and consequential; conviction in our mission is essential.

Areas of Ownership

• Internal tooling: We operate in a highly sensitive environment. Many commercial SaaS products, and hosted AI models in particular, do not meet our security and data sovereignty requirements. You will build and operate our self-hosted, primarily OSS stack end to end: A secure CRM tailored to our needs, state-of-the-art self-hosted AI models and agent systems integrated into knowledge management, call recording, communication tooling, other OSS software we self host, and in-house development of news tracking solutions. If you are excited about designing architecture that allows air-gapping and decentralized access, this role is for you.
• External-facing technology: You take offerings from prototype to production end-to-end: Zero-knowledge proof solutions for anonymous coordination, interactive scenario simulators, or automated legislation trackers. Projects can span months or require rapid 3-day delivery. You will also oversee the tech-side of our website. Your solutions will directly drive the impact and safety of AI whistleblowers. This means you will frequently handle multiple projects simultaneously. You will be the first non-volunteer engineer working on AIWI dedicated technology. Across all areas, security is foundational. You will work closely here with our Head of Security. Given nature of role, onsite London preferred; remote considered.

Requirements

• Genuine, demonstrable passion for AI safety and whistleblower protection
• 10 years in software engineering with DevOps experience in fast-moving settings
• Excellent proficiency across systems-, backend- and web-development; proficiency with systems languages (Rust, Go, C, C++ etc.) required; experience with JS/TS, HTML, CSS, web frameworks required; Python for AI and Data pipelines required
• Excellent project management abilities and communication skills especially towards non-technical colleagues
• Strong grasp of CI/CD, security hardening, cloud and self-hosted infrastructure
• IAC experience (Ansible, OpenTofu, etc.) required
• Experience deploying and integrating existing AI models and tooling (self-hosted open-weight models, agent frameworks, APIs where appropriate) — this is systems integration, not ML research or model training
• Ability to rapidly execute and ability to distinguish between levels of QA and security required for different projects
• Rigorous approach to threat modeling and operational security. You do not have to be a security expert as you will be working with our Head of Security -- but should bring a strong mindset and strong foundational knowledge.

Benefits

• Work as part of an ambitious team committed to a high leverage intervention: A single whistleblower disclosure can move the world if handled well. We get up every morning to make it go well.
• Work on a vast breadth of technological challenges and varying project sizes
• Ownership and responsibility from day 1
• Chance to define your personal career development
• Competitive compensation and comprehensive benefits
• Coaching by AIWI board member and serial entrepreneur/CTO as well as close collaboration with an extremely experienced Head of Security.

Compensation

• Salary: £70,000-£90,000 per annum
• Benefits (Pension, Gym benefit, Learning & Development fund, paid for co-working space, & occasional travel for company-wide offsites or conferences)
• Flexible scheduling; occasional out-of-hours work required

Hiring process

• Application review
• 15 minute introduction call with Jenny, Founders Associate
• 30 minute get to know call with Max, our CTO
• Take home task (4-6 hour challenge)
• 2 hour final interview (in-person) (Review take home task; Competency-based interview; Meet our CEO, Karl)
• References

Referral programme

We provide a reward of £4,000 for successful referrals upon completion of a 6-month employment period. Allocation will occur based on a successful applicant's attribution in the case of multiple referrers.