{"schemaVersion":"jobsearcher.job.v1","id":"42fb12af65680bcd1afdb46e","url":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/42fb12af65680bcd1afdb46e","canonicalUrl":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/42fb12af65680bcd1afdb46e","title":"Software Engineer (Berkeley, CA)","description":"CivAI is a non-profit that educates policymakers and the public about AI risks using live software demonstrations. To date, CivAI has delivered 100+ briefings to organizations across civil society (on AI-cyber risks, deepfakes, and elder fraud) and the US government (on biological risks, elections, and more). Its work has been featured on national television by ABC News and Scripps News, and in print by the New York Times, the Washington Post, TIME, CNN, and many others.\r\nAbout the role\r\nAs a Member of Technical Staff, you will research, build, and refine the software demonstrations that are at the core of what we do. These will explain both prosaic AI capabilities and more nascent ones that are fast approaching.\r\nThis role primarily involves creative software engineering, with flexibility across many domains like interface design, message testing, conducting user interviews, and interfacing with partner organizations.\r\nWe'd love to hear from you! If you have any questions about this role, please email us at jobs@civai.org. The deadline to apply is April 17, 2026.\r\nRefer someone you think would be a great fit for CivAI. If we hire them, you'll receive $2,500 once they've been employed for 6 months. Submit a referral here and learn more about the referral program here.\r\nIn this role, you will:\r\nBuild our demonstrations from end to end, acting as an agentic, creative, and conscientious hacker on a collaborative team.\r\nWrite quality software. That includes considered UI/UX, products that are robust to misuse, and performant code.\r\nCome up with new demonstrations that our audiences will find meaningful. See the Representative Projects section for more.\r\nUse a wide variety of frontier AI systems and tinker with them when necessary. ML engineering skills are not needed.\r\nStay on top of AI progress in order to educate our audiences and inform new demonstrations. You will often read papers and prototype demos reproducing them.\r\nIterate quickly on lightweight projects that pack a rhetorical punch, rather than toil for months on a surgical change to an enterprise codebase.\r\nCommunicate understanding about AI through the software and its accompanying text, in the spirit of interactive explainers or data journalism.\r\nYou may be a good fit if you\r\nWant to help the world understand AI's implications, so that future AI progress is deliberate and beneficial for humanity.\r\nHave built complete software projects that you're proud of, especially full stack web applications. These can be from jobs, side projects, hackathons, or internships.\r\nEnjoy brainstorming about creative ways to showcase how AI is going to manifest in the world.\r\nEnjoy gray-hatting frontier AI systems.\r\nCare about perfecting the entire user experience, from the look and feel of the UI to the speed of the AI inference.\r\nHave an opinionated aesthetic sense of what makes a good software API or user interface.\r\nAre willing to roll up your sleeves and try everything to get something working, even when documentation is sparse and the path forward is unclear.\r\nRepresentative projects\r\nA presentation for high level decision makers featuring several demos about loss of control to advanced AI systems, including our recent demo about emergent misalignment.\r\nA presentation for policymakers showing how frontier AI systems can be used for mass surveillance and bioweapons.\r\nOur policymaker demos suite, which starts with someone's LinkedIn and makes instant deepfakes of them using a combination of open models, writes personalized phishing emails with Gmail-like UI, creates fake news Tweets and NYT articles, and more.\r\nWhat this role is not\r\nSince our work is primarily making demos and presentations, the role involves relatively little \"production app\" work like infrastructure management and job orchestration.\r\nWe do not perform novel research ourselves. We follow and communicate research done by others and build mockups of existing systems like AI surveillance tools.\r\nWe do not do ML engineering. The lowest-level work we do is tinker with fine-tuning and self-host a few open models.\r\nSalary and benefits\r\nThe role is full-time and on-site at our office in Berkeley. We may be open to remote for exceptional candidates.\r\nThe salary range is $125,000 to $200,000.\r\nWe may be able to offer additional compensation to more senior candidates.\r\nWe provide catered lunch and dinner at our office every weekday.\r\nWe may be able to sponsor visas in select cases.\r\nApplication process\r\nInitial application (15 min) — Resume and optional project links to assess fit. Applications are due by April 17, 2026.\r\nCome up with a new demo (2 hrs) — Short take-home task to imagine and technically scope a new AI capabilities demonstration.\r\nTechnical phone interview (1 hr) — Building something cool on a video call.\r\nTechnical discussion (1 hr) — We'll chat about your past work and share more about CivAI.\r\nFinal round interview (3-4 hrs) — Two coding interviews, and conversations with the team.\r\nCivAI is an equal opportunity workplace, and we welcome applicants from all backgrounds regardless of race, color, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, age, socioeconomic status, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.\r\nJ-18808-Ljbffr","company":"Civic Ai Security Program A 501 3 Nonprofit","rawCompany":"civic ai security program a 501 3 nonprofit","city":"Berkeley","state":"CA","isRemote":false,"isActive":false,"createdAt":"2026-06-25T01:16:38.516Z","occupations":[{"code":"15-1252.00","title":"Software Developers","slug":"software-developers"},{"code":"15-1251.00","title":"Computer Programmers","slug":"computer-programmers"},{"code":"15-1299.08","title":"Computer Systems Engineers/Architects","slug":"computer-systems-engineers-architects"}],"industries":[{"code":"513210","title":"Software Publishers","slug":"software-publishers"},{"code":"541511","title":"Custom Computer Programming Services","slug":"custom-computer-programming-services"},{"code":"541512","title":"Computer Systems Design Services","slug":"computer-systems-design-services"}],"jobPosting":{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"JobPosting","title":"Software Engineer (Berkeley, CA)","description":"CivAI is a non-profit that educates policymakers and the public about AI risks using live software demonstrations. To date, CivAI has delivered 100+ briefings to organizations across civil society (on AI-cyber risks, deepfakes, and elder fraud) and the US government (on biological risks, elections, and more). Its work has been featured on national television by ABC News and Scripps News, and in print by the New York Times, the Washington Post, TIME, CNN, and many others.\r\nAbout the role\r\nAs a Member of Technical Staff, you will research, build, and refine the software demonstrations that are at the core of what we do. These will explain both prosaic AI capabilities and more nascent ones that are fast approaching.\r\nThis role primarily involves creative software engineering, with flexibility across many domains like interface design, message testing, conducting user interviews, and interfacing with partner organizations.\r\nWe'd love to hear from you! If you have any questions about this role, please email us at jobs@civai.org. The deadline to apply is April 17, 2026.\r\nRefer someone you think would be a great fit for CivAI. If we hire them, you'll receive $2,500 once they've been employed for 6 months. Submit a referral here and learn more about the referral program here.\r\nIn this role, you will:\r\nBuild our demonstrations from end to end, acting as an agentic, creative, and conscientious hacker on a collaborative team.\r\nWrite quality software. That includes considered UI/UX, products that are robust to misuse, and performant code.\r\nCome up with new demonstrations that our audiences will find meaningful. See the Representative Projects section for more.\r\nUse a wide variety of frontier AI systems and tinker with them when necessary. ML engineering skills are not needed.\r\nStay on top of AI progress in order to educate our audiences and inform new demonstrations. You will often read papers and prototype demos reproducing them.\r\nIterate quickly on lightweight projects that pack a rhetorical punch, rather than toil for months on a surgical change to an enterprise codebase.\r\nCommunicate understanding about AI through the software and its accompanying text, in the spirit of interactive explainers or data journalism.\r\nYou may be a good fit if you\r\nWant to help the world understand AI's implications, so that future AI progress is deliberate and beneficial for humanity.\r\nHave built complete software projects that you're proud of, especially full stack web applications. These can be from jobs, side projects, hackathons, or internships.\r\nEnjoy brainstorming about creative ways to showcase how AI is going to manifest in the world.\r\nEnjoy gray-hatting frontier AI systems.\r\nCare about perfecting the entire user experience, from the look and feel of the UI to the speed of the AI inference.\r\nHave an opinionated aesthetic sense of what makes a good software API or user interface.\r\nAre willing to roll up your sleeves and try everything to get something working, even when documentation is sparse and the path forward is unclear.\r\nRepresentative projects\r\nA presentation for high level decision makers featuring several demos about loss of control to advanced AI systems, including our recent demo about emergent misalignment.\r\nA presentation for policymakers showing how frontier AI systems can be used for mass surveillance and bioweapons.\r\nOur policymaker demos suite, which starts with someone's LinkedIn and makes instant deepfakes of them using a combination of open models, writes personalized phishing emails with Gmail-like UI, creates fake news Tweets and NYT articles, and more.\r\nWhat this role is not\r\nSince our work is primarily making demos and presentations, the role involves relatively little \"production app\" work like infrastructure management and job orchestration.\r\nWe do not perform novel research ourselves. We follow and communicate research done by others and build mockups of existing systems like AI surveillance tools.\r\nWe do not do ML engineering. The lowest-level work we do is tinker with fine-tuning and self-host a few open models.\r\nSalary and benefits\r\nThe role is full-time and on-site at our office in Berkeley. We may be open to remote for exceptional candidates.\r\nThe salary range is $125,000 to $200,000.\r\nWe may be able to offer additional compensation to more senior candidates.\r\nWe provide catered lunch and dinner at our office every weekday.\r\nWe may be able to sponsor visas in select cases.\r\nApplication process\r\nInitial application (15 min) — Resume and optional project links to assess fit. Applications are due by April 17, 2026.\r\nCome up with a new demo (2 hrs) — Short take-home task to imagine and technically scope a new AI capabilities demonstration.\r\nTechnical phone interview (1 hr) — Building something cool on a video call.\r\nTechnical discussion (1 hr) — We'll chat about your past work and share more about CivAI.\r\nFinal round interview (3-4 hrs) — Two coding interviews, and conversations with the team.\r\nCivAI is an equal opportunity workplace, and we welcome applicants from all backgrounds regardless of race, color, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, age, socioeconomic status, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.\r\nJ-18808-Ljbffr","datePosted":"2026-06-25T01:16:38.516Z","dateModified":"2026-06-25T01:16:38.516Z","hiringOrganization":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Civic Ai Security Program A 501 3 Nonprofit","sameAs":"https://jobsearcher.com"},"jobLocation":{"@type":"Place","address":{"@type":"PostalAddress","addressLocality":"Berkeley","addressRegion":"CA","addressCountry":"US"}},"identifier":{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"JobSearcher","value":"42fb12af65680bcd1afdb46e"},"url":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/42fb12af65680bcd1afdb46e"}}