Principal Engineer

The AI Whistleblower Initiative

Principal Engineer (London)

London, United Kingdom (hybrid)

£70,000–£90,000/year

Permanent employment contract (Open-ended contract)

Contract details

£70,000–£90,000/year

Permanent employment contract (Open-ended contract)

As soon as possible

Note: We will begin reviewing applications from 5 October 2026 and will continue to consider them on a rolling basis until the role is filled. First-round interviews are expected to take place in mid October, with the process anticipated to close by the first week of November. Timelines are indicative and may change.

LOCATION: London, UK preferred. EU considered.

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.

Tasks

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

• 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.

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

• Package

• GBP £70,000 - £90,000 commensurate with experience

• Up to 9% on UEL pension contribution

• 25 days of annual leave plus public bank holidays

• Paid parental leave

• Professional development budget

• A home office or equipment stipend for hybrid staff

• Wellness budget

• Paid for co-working space in London

• Flexible scheduling; occasional out-of-hours work required

• Why join?

• 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.

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.

• 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:

• Application review

• Intro call (15 min): Jenny, Head of People & Ops

• Get-to-know call (30 min): Max, Technology Advisor

• Take-home task (2-3 hrs) + review call (45 min): Max

• Final interview (1 hour): competency-based, plus meet Karl (Founder) or Jenny

• 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.

Work authorization:

• For London-based roles, we can sponsor UK visas.

Equal Opportunity:

• AIWI is an equal opportunities employer, in line with the UK Equality Act 2010. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and are committed to a workplace free from discrimination.

• Updated: 3 days ago

• Job ID: 16896320

• AI can dramatically transform our world for the better. We help those upright and courageous individuals who want to bring this future about: those in the privileged position of s…

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• Work location

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• Contract details

• £70,000–£90,000/year

• Permanent employment contract (Open-ended contract)

• As soon as possible

• Contact person

• Jenny Huzell

• Hiring team

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