Hortus AI is an early-stage startup whose vision is to empower ordinary people to understand, compare, and adopt AI tools on their terms. Composed of ethics and safety experts, Hortus is building an online marketplace to function as a Consumer Reports for AI, ranking hundreds of models on public interest use cases. We are launching this marketplace in partnership with the GovAI Coalition, a base of 500+ local, state, and federal agencies united in the mission to promote responsible and purposeful AI in the public sector. We are recruiting for a software engineer to support backend development of the marketplace as we prepare for our public launch. The main responsibilities for this role will be to create and maintain data infrastructure as well as application hosting that builds on our beta testing this summer. This work will operate closely in tandem with our GitHub repository. The successful candidate(s) may also propose novel projects to support this work and develop our product roadmap, in particular on areas of mutual interest including: AI risk assessment, algorithmic audits, model transparency & disclosure. You will work directly with the CEO, Thomas Krendl Gilbert, who designed and completed one of the world’s first interdisciplinary PhDs in Machine Ethics at UC Berkeley. Through his work at Hortus, Gilbert has led collaborations and partnerships with the Berkeley Center for Human-Compatible AI, the City of Boston, and the New York Academy of Sciences. We are able to work with students to secure academic credit for this role. Anticipated workload is up to 30 hours/week for 4 months, with the possibility of extension based on performance. Please email Thomas Gilbert (tom@hortus.ai) with a resume and brief statement of interest. Anticipated start date: Fall 2025. Requirements: ● ~2 years of software engineering experience ● Competence in relevant programming languages (e.g. Python) ● Excellent written communication ● Ability to work out of our Oakland, CA office. Preferred: ● Full-time availability (35 hrs/week) ● Prior experience with relevant open source libraries and frameworks, including: ○ Django ○ PostgreSQL