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 all technology covering architecture, implementation, deployment, security and maintenance. You will build and operate a self-hosted open-source internal stack including a secure CRM and AI agent systems, and take external-facing tools from prototype to production while managing a budget and working with the Head of Security.
Requirements
- Passion for AI safety and whistleblower protection
- 10 years in software engineering with DevOps experience
- Proficiency with systems languages (Rust, Go, C, C++)
- Experience with JS/TS, HTML, CSS and web frameworks
- Python for AI and data pipelines
- Strong project management and communication skills
- Strong grasp of CI/CD, security hardening, cloud and self-hosted infrastructure
- IaC experience (Ansible, OpenTofu)
- Experience deploying and integrating AI models and tooling
- Rigorous approach to threat modeling and operational security
Responsibilities
- Own architecture, implementation, deployment, security and maintenance of all technology
- Build and operate a self-hosted, primarily OSS internal tooling stack
- Deploy self-hosted AI models and agent systems integrated into knowledge management and communication tooling
- Take external-facing technology from prototype to production
- Oversee the technical side of the website
- Manage a technology budget
- Translate requirements from operations, research and advocacy teams into working systems
- Collaborate with the Head of Security
Benefits
- Up to 9% UEL pension contribution
- 25 days 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; take-home task (2-3 hrs) plus 45-minute review call; 1-hour competency-based final interview with founder or Head of People & Ops; references.