AI Operations Specialist

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 Specialist to help us integrate AI deeply and responsibly across everything we do. Learn more at free.technology.

Role

IFT is seeking an AI Operations Specialist 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 role will also co-pilot some AI initiatives currently run by our Business Insights team.

This is a unique opportunity for a strategic thinker who loves to tinker with new tech and enjoys working with both code & people. Someone who isn’t afraid of a steep learning curve; a master communicator with the ability to extract project details from a diverse mix of IFT contributors sprinkled across the globe. 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.
• Evaluate and manage AI tooling, vendor licences and cross-team integrations

Cross-team Coordination

• Identify and map organisational capabilities ripe for AI enhancement.
• Act as the central AI coordinator, ensuring visibility and alignment across teams.
• Define hand-off points and metadata standards for Business Insights, Communications, and Finance teams.
• Pinpoint upskilling opportunities for People Operations, initially.

Pilots & Optimisation

• Design and launch AI pilot projects with clear ROI metrics and timelines.
• Continuously assess and improve performance, usability, and ethical alignment of tools.
• Maintain best-practice libraries and internal policy guardrails for responsible AI use.

Documentation & Culture

• Create accessible documentation to support internal tool adoption.
• Support feedback loops to refine both tools and workflows.
• Help shape IFT’s “AI-native” culture—one that is transparent, ethical, and mission-aligned.

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.
• Understanding of modern LLM tooling and platforms — e.g. LangChain, OpenAI APIs, vector databases (like Pinecone, Weaviate), and orchestration tools (e.g., LangGraph, AutoGen).
• Experience in, and/or a passion for Web3 & Blockchain technology
• High emotional intelligence and proven stakeholder relationship management skills; comfortable interfacing with both deeply technical and non-technical contributors at IFT.
• Humble, curious, and eager to help reinvent operations through an AI-first lens.
• Strong organizational skills and operational intuition.
• Preferably, experience working with open-source communities or projects

Bonus skills

Comfort 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 and / or Alexis, Infra Team

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.