About
IFT is a mission-driven startup studio building public goods to safeguard civil liberties in the digital age. We build open source and decentralised technologies to push back against digital overreach — and now, we’re looking to go all-in on AI.
We’re hiring an AI Operations Engineer to help us integrate AI deeply and responsibly across everything we do. Learn more at free.technology.
Role
IFT is seeking an AI Operations Engineer with a strong technical background and a passion for decentralisation. This role is key to supporting the deployment, management, and coordination of AI-driven tools and systems across all of our projects. You’ll play a hands-on role in making AI systems function smoothly while interfacing across engineering, research and operations.
This is a unique opportunity for someone who loves to tinker with new tech, enjoys working with both code & people; someone who isn’t afraid of a steep learning curve. You’ll help to implement cutting-edge AI application pilots across the organisation to help capture success metrics and improve efficiency.
Key Responsibilities
AI Tooling & Deployment
- Implement and support day-to-day operations of AI tools across multiple teams.
- Manage and monitor AI agents in production environments.
- Build and maintain pipelines for model deployment and iteration.
Cross-team Collaboration
- Interface with engineering, research, and operations teams to identify high-impact AI opportunities.
- Help teams articulate their needs and translate them into scalable AI workflows.
- Prioritise AI tasks by mapping them to real operational pain points.
Optimisation & Documentation
- Create documentation and support feedback loops for internal tools.
- Continuously evaluate and improve AI tool performance and user experience.
- Help build the systems and culture of an “AI-native” organisation.
Requirements
- 3–7 years in technical operations, DevOps, or IT with hands-on exposure to software tooling and automation workflows.
- Strong technical grounding: able to grasp key AI/ML concepts, data structures, APIs, and system architecture.
- Experience in, and/or a passion for Web3 & Blockchain technology
- Preferably, experience working with open-source communities or projects
- High emotional intelligence and proven stakeholder relationship management skills; comfortable interfacing with both deeply technical and non-technical contributors at IFT.
- Curiosity and humility, you should be willing to unlearn conventional ops models to help shape a native-AI org.
- Understanding of modern LLM tooling and platforms — e.g. LangChain, OpenAI APIs, vector databases (like Pinecone, Weaviate), and orchestration tools (e.g., LangGraph, AutoGen).
- Strong organizational skills and operational intuition.
Bonus skills
Previous experience working in agile, iterative, and distributed environments.
[Don’t worry if you don’t meet all of these criteria, we’d still love to hear from you anyway if you think you’d be a great fit for this role. Just explain to us why in your cover letter].
Hiring process
- Interview with our Talent team
- Interview with Arwen, Chief of Staff
- Interview with Jonathan, People Operations Lead
- Interview with Corey, Head of Insights
The steps may change along the way if we see it makes sense to adapt the interview stages, so please consider the above as a guideline.
Compensation
The expected compensation range for this role is $60,000 – $90,000 USD annually (negotiable, dependent on how we assess your skills and experience throughout our interview process). We are happy to pay in any mix of fiat/crypto.
