Tech Lead (CTO) – Open Authenticity Infrastructure (Nonprofit)

About us

We have a small window of time before AI-generated media becomes indistinguishable from authentic content. A few years from now, mistrust in digital media will grow large enough that historical records saved at archives will have their authenticity questioned. We need to make sure now that we can provide reliable indicators of authenticity for digital historical records. This is a key moment in time.

The Global Authentic Memory Initiative (GAMI) is building an open cryptographic infrastructure that lets archives, memorial institutions, and libraries create long-term and publicly verifiable proofs of existence, integrity, and institutional provenance for their digital records. Our architecture is technically mature and uses SHA-256 file fingerprinting, Ed25519 institutional signatures, Bitcoin-anchored timestamps via OpenTimestamps as well as did:webvh-based key management. No content leaves an institution, no central authority can revoke a valid proof, and the entire toolchain is open source.

We are a small, interdisciplinary non-profit at an early and consequential stage pursuing a societally motivated and forward-thinking mission: to protect digital witness records in a new age of media where they are increasingly contested. (Learn more about our mission on our website.) Our founding team spans computer science, physics, and philosophy; our academic advisory board includes professors across disciplines at TU Munich, LMU, and Princeton.

The core architecture is built, and our first institutional pilots are complete with German concentration camp memorials. The next phase is funded by Google.org and the German Federal Government.

About the role

What we need now is the person who takes technical ownership and makes the system better than we could on our own. This is a founding engineering role, which means real responsibility for a technically meaningful product and for the direction it takes.

Core system development

• Own the full development lifecycle of our verification platform, from cryptographic foundations to the public-facing verification interface.
• Maintain and evolve our four-layer proof architecture (file fingerprinting, GAMI Proof Record construction, institutional digital signatures, distributed timestamp anchoring).
• Ensure the continued cryptographic integrity of the system as it scales and standards evolve, e.g. planning for post-quantum resilience.
• Review and improve the existing codebase with your own informed perspective on architecture.

Archival integration

• Build integrations with diverse archival systems, including Archivematica and Preservica.
• Ensure usability for institutions with very different technical capacities.

Technical leadership and communication

• Lead our engineering team: three full-time engineers, two interns, a volunteer developes, and a master's thesis student.
• Be the technical voice in conversations with our institutional partners, with funders and research labs, on conference stages, and in public-facing technical communications.
• Contribute to shaping the long-term technical roadmap with your own ideas.

Minimum qualifications

• Senior software engineering experience with a track record of leading complex systems end-to-end
• Strong working knowledge of applied cryptography, including hashing, digital signatures, key management, and the judgment to reason about integrity-critical system design
• A public track record others can check: publications, standards contributions or RFCs, conference talks, or open-source projects where you are a named author or maintainer
• Fluency in English (internal language is English; German for institutional partner work is an add-on)
• Comfortable representing technical work to non-technical institutional partners
• Willingness and ability to travel to Germany for key occasions, several times per year

Preferred qualifications

• A doctorate in cryptography, computer science, or an adjacent field
• Experience with timestamping or anchoring protocols, including keeping one running over years
• Familiarity with archival systems and standards: Archivematica, Preservica, EAD, Dublin Core, PREMIS, or comparable
• Experience integrating software with heterogeneous database environments or institutional data systems
• Prior experience in a startup, early-stage organization, or similar setting, with (co-)responsibility for building a tech infrastructure from the ground up
• Hands-on experience with one or more of the specific standards in our stack: Ed25519 / RFC 8032, SHA-256 / FIPS 180-4, OpenTimestamps, did:webvh, JSON-LD, RFC 8785, C2PA, or hash-based signatures such as XMSS and SLH-DSA
• Fluency in German
• Based in Munich, or the ability to travel to Munich for important meetings, e.g. with partner institutions

We do not expect anyone to match every line. If you are strong on the cryptographic side and light on archives, or the reverse, apply and tell us which side you are on. We would rather hear from someone smart and driven by similar values who does not tick every box.

What we offer

• Influence over architectural decisions as a founding team member from day one
• A highly impactful role: We are building the solution to a time-critical problem with tangible benefit for future generations.
• An interdisciplinary, international team with a non-hierarchical, democratic work culture
• Remote work possible, with Munich as home base
• A salaried full-time position, benchmarked to TVöD Bund: 60,000 to 68,000 EUR gross per year, depending on experience. If you work from outside Germany, we match this at equivalent employer cost through an employer of record. We are publicly funded and bound by public-sector pay rules, and we state this up front rather than at the end of a process.

Start date: As soon as possible.

How to apply

• Send your CV and a short note on why this role interests you to [email protected].

If anything is unclear, just reach out.

More at https://authenticmemory.org/join-us/