Principal Engineer
Independent nonprofit supporting frontier-AI insiders who want to raise concerns through research, policy advocacy, and access to vetted legal and financial resources.
About The AI Whistleblower Initiative (AIWI)
AIWI supports AI-industry whistleblowers, their support organizations, lawyers, and journalists. Its active services include anonymous independent concern assessment, a directory of support organizations, and guidance on legal and financial support; it also conducts AI whistleblowing policy research and advocacy.
Skills
Candidate Availability
Required and preferred rules are kept separate and reflect the wording in the original posting.
About the Role
You will own technology architecture, implementation, deployment, security, and maintenance. You will build and operate secure self-hosted systems, including CRM, AI and agent tooling, knowledge-management integrations, communications tooling, and news tracking. You will take external technology from prototype to production, oversee website technology, manage a delivery budget, and translate operational, research, and advocacy requirements into secure working systems. You will manage multiple projects and apply appropriate security and quality standards.
Requirements
- Demonstrable passion for AI safety and whistleblower protection.
- 10 years of software engineering experience with DevOps experience.
- Proficiency in systems, backend, and web development.
- Proficiency with a systems language such as Rust, Go, C, or C++.
- Experience with JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML, CSS, and web frameworks.
- Python experience for AI and data pipelines.
- Project management and communication skills.
- Knowledge of CI/CD, security hardening, cloud infrastructure, and self-hosted infrastructure.
- Infrastructure-as-code experience with tools such as Ansible or OpenTofu.
- Experience deploying and integrating self-hosted AI models, agent frameworks, and APIs.
- Threat-modeling and operational-security knowledge.
Responsibilities
- Own technology architecture, implementation, deployment, security, and maintenance.
- Build and operate a secure self-hosted open-source technology stack.
- Develop internal tooling including CRM, AI systems, knowledge-management integrations, and communications tooling.
- Deliver external-facing products from prototype to production.
- Oversee website technology.
- Manage a budget for roadmap delivery.
- Translate non-technical requirements into working systems.
- Apply security hardening, threat modeling, and operational security practices.
- Manage multiple technology projects simultaneously.
Benefits
- Pension contribution of up to 9% on UEL.
- 25 days of annual leave plus public bank holidays.
- Paid parental leave.
- Professional development budget.
- Home office or equipment stipend for hybrid staff.
- Wellness budget.
- Paid co-working space in London.
- Flexible scheduling.
Hiring Process
Application review → 15-minute intro call → 30-minute get-to-know call → 2–3-hour take-home task and 45-minute review call → final competency-based interview and meeting → references.