AI Operations Engineer

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.