---
title: 'Platform Engineer at LawZero'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/platform-engineer-lawzero-montreal-4bef2adt2wpn'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Platform Engineer at LawZero

- **Company:** LawZero
- **Location:** Montréal, Canada
- **Posted:** 2026-08-27
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/lawzero/jobs/4385557009

## Job description

Founded by Yoshua Bengio, LawZero is a nonprofit organization focused on AI safety. In charge of technology, the IT department oversees Cybersecurity, End User support, and the management of the compute environment used to achieve our mission.

You will own the platform layer that sits between our people and the GPU infrastructure: CI/CD pipelines, Kubernetes clusters, cloud environments, and the standards that keep them consistent and secure. This is a hands-on role on a small IT team, with a wide surface area and a lot of room to shape how things are built.

## Key responsibilities

- Design, deploy, and run Kubernetes clusters for research workloads, including autoscaling, network policies, and workload isolation, both on-premise and in the cloud.
- Define, communicate, and enforce best practices for CI/CD pipelines: automated builds, tests, container image creation, and deployments, with security scanning and provenance built into the pipeline rather than bolted on.
- Implement and manage internal services supporting our research and data teams, providing them with a reliable, secure platform. Examples include artifacts registry, Container registries, etc.
- Manage our cloud environments as code (Terraform or equivalent): accounts, networking, identity, secrets, and cost visibility.
- Define and champion platform standards. Base images, deployment patterns, environment promotion, so researchers and engineers ship without reinventing the plumbing each time.
- Work at the boundary between Kubernetes and our HPC cluster: containerized workflows that need to interface with the ones running on Slurm, shared storage access, and tooling that makes both environments feel coherent to a researcher.
- Build observability into the platform: metrics, logs, traces, and alerts that make failures obvious and debugging quick. We currently use Prometheus and Grafana.
- Embed security controls into everything above: least-privilege IAM, secrets management, supply-chain integrity for dependencies and images, network segmentation, and audit trails.
- Document what you build and automate what you repeat. Reduce the number of things that only work because one person remembers how.
- Participate in incident response for platform services, and in the post-incident work that keeps the same problem from recurring.

## Skills and qualifications

-

## Experience

- 3–5 years in platform engineering, DevOps, SRE, or a closely related infrastructure role.
- Production experience with Kubernetes. Not just deploying to it, but operating it: upgrades, RBAC, networking, storage, troubleshooting a cluster that is misbehaving.
- Solid CI/CD experience with a modern toolchain (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, or similar), including building pipelines from scratch.
- Experience architecting, deploying, and maintaining a GitOps workflow is an asset.
- Hands-on experience with at least one major cloud provider (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and infrastructure as code. Familiarity with on-premise infrastructure is a plus.
- Strong Linux fundamentals and comfort with a scripting or programming language such as Python, Go, or Bash.
- Working knowledge of containers beyond the basics: image layering, registries, runtime security, minimal base images.
- Fluency in written and spoken English, French is a strong asset.
- Experience supporting ML or research workloads: GPU scheduling, distributed training, large datasets, high-throughput storage is an asset.

Security mindset

This matters as much as the technical checklist. We are looking for someone who:

- Thinks about the blast radius of a change before making it, and about who could abuse an access path that was opened for convenience.
- Treats secrets, credentials, and access as first-class design concerns rather than afterthoughts.
- Understands supply-chain risk in a build pipeline: dependency provenance, image signing, artifact integrity, what a compromised runner could reach.
- Applies least privilege by default and can explain to a researcher why a control exists, without being obstructive about it.
- Has practical familiarity with identity and access management, network segmentation, and secure defaults in cloud environments.

Ways of working

- Comfortable being the person who owns a domain end to end in a small team, without a large org to hand things off to.
- Able to work with researchers whose priorities are speed and flexibility, and find solutions that are both secure and genuinely usable.
- Clear written communication. You will write documentation and design notes that others depend on.
- Capable of managing multiple priorities and adjusting to a frequently changing environment.

## What we offer

- The opportunity to contribute to a unique mission with a major impact
- Comprehensive health benefits
- A minimum of 20 days vacation per year upon start
- A minimum retirement savings employer contribution of 4%
- Generous flexible benefits designed to contribute to your well-being
- A team of passionate experts in their field
- A collaborative and inclusive work environment with offices in the heart of Little Italy, in the trendy Mile-Ex district, close to public transportation

## About LawZero

LawZero is a non-profit organization committed to advancing research and creating technical solutions that enable safe-by-design AI systems. Its scientific direction is based on new research and methods proposed by Professor Yoshua Bengio, the most cited AI researcher in the world. Based in Montreal, LawZero’s research aims to build non-agentic AI that learns primarily to understand the world rather than to act in it, giving truthful answers to questions based on transparent and externalized probabilistic reasoning. Such AI systems could be used to accelerate scientific discovery, to provide oversight for agentic AI systems, and to advance the understanding of AI risks and how to avoid them. LawZero believes that AI should be cultivated as a global public good—developed and used safely towards human flourishing. For more information, visit [www.lawzero.org](https://www.lawzero.org/)

You belong here

At LawZero, diversity is important to us. We value a work environment that is fair, open and respectful of differences. We welcome applications from highly qualified individuals interested in working towards our mission in a respectful, inclusive and collaborative setting.

Your personal information will be collected and processed by LawZero to evaluate your application for employment in compliance with our [Privacy Policy](https://lawzero.org/en/website-privacy-notice). Under privacy laws in force in your country of residence, you may have several privacy rights, such as to request access to your personal information or to request that your personal information be rectified or erased. Details on how you can exercise your rights can be found in our Privacy Policy.

## About LawZero

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: LawZero is a Canadian nonprofit research organization developing "Scientist AI," a non-agentic, safe-by-design artificial intelligence system.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Nonprofit research organization; funded through philanthropic grants)
- **Headquarters**: Montréal, Quebec, Canada
- **Founded**: June 3, 2025
- **Founders**: Yoshua Bengio

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: AI Safety Research
- **Target customers**: The organization is not a commercial entity; its research outputs are intended for the global public good, with potential downstream users including governments, AI companies, and scientific researchers.
- **Mission or purpose**: To develop AI systems that are "safe by design" through technical research insulated from commercial and government pressures, cultivated as a global public good.

## Products & Services
- **Scientist AI**: A novel, non-agentic AI system designed to understand the world through probabilistic reasoning, produce transparent and auditable predictions, and have no hidden goals or preferences. The system is built on three mechanisms: contextualization (separating facts from opinions), consequence invariance (preventing feedback from downstream outcomes), and a generator–estimator architecture (a creative generator held accountable by a neutral estimator). Intended uses include accelerating scientific discovery, providing guardrails for agentic AI systems, and advancing understanding of AI risks. **Type**: Research / Technical Framework

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not applicable (nonprofit)
- **Key Metric**: Total Philanthropic Funding: > US$35 million (as of August 2025, including a grant from the Gates Foundation). An additional > CAD$100 million in financial backing from the Government of Canada was under discussion as of February 2026.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Funders include Jaan Tallinn, Schmidt Sciences, Coefficient Giving, the Future of Life Institute, and the Gates Foundation. Operating partner is Mila – Quebec AI Institute. Affiliated with MATS (AI-alignment training program).
- **Growth Signals**: Launched in June 2025 with ~15 researchers; grew to ~30 employees by February 2026, with stated plans to expand to more than 100 within a year. Secured significant government interest (letter of intent from the Government of Canada). Inaugural board and global advisory council announced in January 2026, including high-profile members such as historian Yuval Noah Harari and former Prime Minister of Sweden Stefan Löfven.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Founder Reputation**: Founded by Yoshua Bengio, the world’s most cited living AI researcher and a Turing Prize winner, lending unparalleled scientific credibility.
- **Mission-Driven Position**: Operates as a nonprofit, explicitly insulated from market and government pressures, which differentiates its research from major for-profit AI labs (e.g., OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic).
- **Unique Technical Approach**: Its core concept, "Scientist AI," is a fundamentally different path to advanced AI—non-agentic and designed for safety from the ground up—rather than a modification of existing agentic systems.
- **Compute Advantage**: A potential partnership with the Government of Canada is structured to provide substantial compute resources (the majority of expenditure is for compute), a critical and expensive resource for frontier AI research.

## Strategic Focus
- **Research & Development**: The entire organization is focused on advancing the "Scientist AI" framework, with primary activities being theoretical research (as seen in arXiv preprints and white papers), algorithm development, and building the technical architecture.
- **Talent Acquisition**: Aggressively hiring to scale the research team from ~30 to over 100 people within the next year.
- **Global Governance**: Building a global advisory council and board to influence AI safety policy and standards, in addition to technical research.
- **Scientific Application**: One concrete application area being explored is the use of Scientist AI to accelerate drug discovery and scientific research, supported by the Gates Foundation grant.

## Why Work Here
- **Highly Mission-Driven**: A rare opportunity to work on fundamental AI safety research at a nonprofit, free from the commercial pressures of major AI labs. The explicit goal is to build AI as a global public good.
- **World-Class Leadership**: Work directly under and alongside Yoshua Bengio and a leadership team with deep expertise in AI.
- **Growth Trajectory**: The organization is in a rapid scaling phase (growing from 15 to 100+ people), offering early employees significant influence and rapid career growth.
- **Prime Location**: Based in Montréal, a major AI research hub with access to talent from Mila and top universities.
- **Policy Impact**: Involvement with a high-profile global advisory council that includes former heads of state, offering a chance to shape AI governance.
- **Work Environment**: The culture emphasizes safety, mission integrity, and rigorous scientific research. The organization is structured as a research lab, not a commercial entity.

## Sources
1. [LawZero Official Website](https://lawzero.org/en)
2. [LawZero Careers Page (Greenhouse)](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/lawzero)
3. [Wikipedia - LawZero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LawZero)
4. [LawZero Team Page](https://lawzero.org/en/team)
5. [LawZero Research Page](https://lawzero.org/en/research)

## Other roles at LawZero

- [Senior Data Platform Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-data-platform-engineer-lawzero-montreal-x9384bvj4059) — Montréal, Canada
- [Senior Manager, Talent Acquisition](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-manager-talent-acquisition-lawzero-montreal-j5eqjx54dfe3) — Montréal, Canada
- [Operations Admin Lead – Executive Office](https://feeny.ai/job/operations-admin-lead-executive-office-lawzero-montreal-fvvna9c8aper) — Montréal, Canada
- [Senior ML Data Processing Developer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-ml-data-processing-developer-lawzero-montreal-5wp0w4r3spk7) — Montréal, Canada
- [Senior Researcher Communications Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-researcher-communications-specialist-lawzero-montreal-70swcv9djdbd) — Montréal, Canada
- [Machine Learning Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-manager-lawzero-montreal-ddxs7d0jnk2v) — Montréal, Canada
- [Join our Talent Community (future opportunities)](https://feeny.ai/job/join-our-talent-community-future-opportunities-lawzero-multiple-a0gzf9abwev7) — Multiple
- [Responsible AI & Data Governance Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/responsible-ai-data-governance-lead-lawzero-montreal-fj7e83h98pqa) — Montréal, Canada
- [Mathematical Scientist for AI Safety Research](https://feeny.ai/job/mathematical-scientist-for-ai-safety-research-lawzero-montreal-kv2e1etp7wk0) — Montréal, Canada
- [Director, Evaluations](https://feeny.ai/job/director-evaluations-lawzero-montreal-nhj2b35b8jy2) — Montréal, Canada