About Current AI

 CurrentAl is a first-of-its-kind global public-private partnership that brings together governments, foundations, and the private sector to build public interest AI at scale. Launched at the AI Action Summit in Paris in 2025, the organisation has already raised hundreds of millions through partnerships with the French government, AI Collaborative, and other leading governments, philanthropic, and industry partners.

 If AI is the transformative revolution we perceive itto be, it needs to serve the public interest today and tomorrow. At Current AI, our goal is to help build a collaborative, collective, and global vision for AI, not one governed by a specific country or a company.

Today there are builders and researchers around the world developing public interest AI building blocks (datasets, models, compute, audits and applications), but efforts are not always co-ordinated or additive. To have a genuine shot at being an alternative, we must harness the full breadth of work happening across open source and public interest AI. That means helping transform individual, decentralised initiatives into a coherent Public Interest AI movement, and helping unblock builders via funding or tool development or connecting efforts together.

Why this role matters  

To achieve our mission, we're going to build alongside the community. Our output will not be research or policy papers, but actual open and auditable technology. To do this, we are drawing from three ecosystems:

• Open source, for its values of openness, transparency, and collaboration
• Startups, for their agility, speed, and focus on real users
• The public interest and philanthropic ecosystem, for their commitment to impact and societal benefit

Current AI is building toward a vertically integrated, open-source public-interest AI stack. The AI Researcher & Engineer plays a central role in identifying those gaps and building the tools that fill them, releasing the resulting work as public goods.

This role is the first technical hire and technical lead on our tech stack. It sits at the intersection of research, systems thinking, and hands-on engineering. You will help map the public-interest AI value chain, identify points of highest leverage where open infrastructure is missing or underdeveloped, and contribute directly to building that infrastructure, whether through internal development or incubation of external builders.

This is a role for someone who wants to build foundational tech that others depend on, not just models or demos - and who is motivated by impact, openness, and ecosystem health.

What you’ll do

• Keep a finger on the pulse of the newest research, tools and applications in open source AI
• Prototype cutting edge ML experiments
• Build and deploy applied AI tools and systems across Current AI’s focus areas (e.g. auditability, health, cultural preservation), working end-to-end from data pipelines to production monitoring.
• Work with the ecosystem team, grantees and partners to identify gaps where new tools, standards, or infrastructure are needed.
• Help decide where Current AI should build directly versus incubate external builders: Help define technical roadmaps for infrastructure, tools, and products that serve as shared AI public goods.
• Prototype, test, and iterate rapidly in ambiguous problem spaces to validate concepts, unblock partners, or explore new directions, from early experiments to production-ready systems.
• Contribute to open infrastructure and communities: develop and maintain open-source code, models, datasets, or evaluation tools; engage actively with the open-source community; and share learnings so others can build on the work.
• Combine research insight with practical engineering to move from concept to usable, maintained artifacts.
• Contribute to open technical standards, benchmarks, or shared practices where appropriate.
• Work closely with Programs, and Movement teams to ensure technical work is grounded in real-world needs.
• Help translate technical decisions and trade-offs for non-technical stakeholders.

What we are looking for  

 Must-haves

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, MachineLearning, or a related field
• 4-8+ years of experience as a software engineer,ML engineer, or AI engineer, with evidence of shipping real systems.
• Strong proficiency in Python and modern ML frameworks (e.g. PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow).
• Experience working with modern ML models (e.g.foundation models, multimodal models, or applied ML systems).
• Familiar with methods of training and fine-tuning large language models, such as distillation, supervised fine-tuning, and policy optimisation
• Solid understanding of data pipelines, evaluation, and deployment in real-world settings.
• Experience contributing to or maintaining open-source software or strong motivation to do so.
• Ability to reason about and communicate technical trade-offs clearly.
• Ability to work collaboratively with cross-functional teams
• Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills, with a proactive approach to challenges
• Professional fluency in English; French is a plus but not required.
• Genuine commitment to building AI that serves the public interest.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience in one or more focus areas: healthAI, linguistic or cultural preservation, trust & safety, AI auditing, or open infrastructure.
• Experience working with constrained, messy, or low-resource datasets.
• Familiarity with responsible AI, interpretability, robustness, or evaluation methods.
• Experience collaborating with governments, NGOs, or research institutions.
• Contributions to technical standards, benchmarks, or public datasets. 

Character traits

We’re looking for people who:

• Put the mission before personal credit and work well in low-ego, highly collaborative teams
• Exercise good judgment and integrity, including knowing when to push back or say no
• Enjoy building from scratch and making progress with imperfect information
• Have a bias to action, shipping useful things and helping others do the same
• Are comfortable moving between strategy and hands-on execution as needed
• Work effectively across cultures, time zones, and disciplines
• Believe AI can serve the public interest - and are willing to do the practical, unglamorous work to make that true.

The offer

We’re committed to ensuring that team members are supported, well-compensated, and able to thrive.

Expected Salary Range: €125k-€200k depending on experience and location.

How to apply

Please email your CV to Christian Kenny from the search firm helping us with this hire, using the button below, and attach a covering note answering each of the following questions in no more than 500 words in total:  

What draws you to Current AI’s mission, and how it connects to your own journey (professional or personal)?

Equal opportunity commitment   

Current AI is committed to ensuring equal access to employment and preventing all forms of discrimination. All applications will be reviewed fairly, without regard to origin, sex, gender identity, age, sexual orientation, disability, religious beliefs, views held, or any other criteria unrelated to professional qualifications. Selection will be based solely on skills, experience, and suitability for the role.  

Current AI does not accept unsolicited applications from recruitment agencies with whom we do not have a signed agreement. Current AI will not be liable for any fees or commissions in the event that a candidate submitted in this manner is subsequently hired.