Principal Engineer (London)

LOCATION: London, UK.

Most high-stakes moments in AI over the coming years will involve frontier company insiders having and raising concerns: within companies, to regulators, or through other pathways.

Those insiders tell us they face enormous uncertainty along the “concern raising” path -- from detecting concerns to whether and how to voice concerns with maximum impact and minimal risk, which even legally protected whistleblowing can carry.

To date, no organization has dedicated itself deeply to delivering the best strategic, frontier-AI-specific guidance to these individuals, their supporters, and their attorneys (our partners). We exist to ensure that each insider disclosure is maximally impactful and safe for the person making the disclosure.

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 and our 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

1. 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.
2. 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 the nature of the role, onsite in London is preferred; remote work will be considered.

• 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.

What we offer

• 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
• Coaching by an 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)
• Leave
• Flexible scheduling; occasional out-of-hours work required

Who you'd be joining:

AIWI is an independent non-profit launched in late 2024. We are ~4 team members today and are scaling to ~15 within the year, spread across the Bay Area, DC, and London. Joining now, you will significantly shape what the future of AI insider support looks like. We are funded until 2029.

Examples of our work to date:

• Policy: We pushed for and shaped the EU AI Office's channel, the world's first AI whistleblowing channel. In the US, we support the federal AI Whistleblower Protection Act and have provided expert research input on implementing SB 53's incident reporting mechanisms through a research coalition, which we helped set up. Read our work in Tech Policy Press, the Institute for Law & AI, and Transformer, and see our AI Whistleblowing Law Best Practice Guide.
• Insider education & support: Our online campaigns have reached thousands of company employees. We produce guides (available upon request), online courses, and help establish connections to our great partner attorneys and support (e.g. on legal advice and defense funding).
• Advocacy: Anthropic published its whistleblowing policy and OpenAI strengthened theirs following our Publish Your Policies Campaign.
• Network: We closely collaborate with the world's leading whistleblowing and AI organizations.

Our ambition is to ensure that each insider disclosure is maximally impactful and safe for the person making the disclosure. Joining us means dedicating yourself to achieving that goal with us.

Hiring process:

1. Application review
2. 15 minute introduction call with Jenny, Founder's Associate
3. 30 minute get to know call with Max, our CTO
4. Take home task (4-6 hour challenge)
5. In-person* 2-hour final interview (review take home task; competency-based interview; and meet our CEO, Karl)
6. References

* Ideally, we would like to meet you in our London office.

Referral program:

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.

How to apply:

Submit your application via Join.com. We will review applications on a rolling basis until the role is filled.

Work authorization:

• We can sponsor UK visas.

Equal Opportunity:

AIWI is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applicants of all backgrounds and do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected status.