Queer in AI part-time positions

QueerInAI is hiring folks for part-time positions. One will be focused on research and queer advocacy (Research and Advocacy Executive, henceforth labelled as RAE) to work on grants, policies, accelerating research regarding the intersection of queerness and AI and beyond, and most importantly, queer advocacy. Another position is based on diversity, equity and inclusion administrative work of Queer in AI (DEI admin, henceforth labelled as DEIA). The base salary is 35 USD per hour and it is a remote part-time position.

Directions for application

Submit the application form here. Your application should contain a link to your resume and an essay. This essay can be a proposal describing the research and advocacy that you plan to proceed with when you join this position (no word or page limit; please submit in PDF form). Once you have submitted the application, please join the Queer in AI slack (instructions here under “Join our community”), if you haven’t already.

The deadline for applications is 15 January.

Research and Advocacy Executive (RAE)

The RAE serves as an advancement leader of Queer in AI and acts as a representative in all related events and functions. The RAE is expected to work on grants, policies, accelerating research regarding the intersection of queerness and AI and beyond, and most importantly, queer advocacy. This position reports to the self-accountable committee.

Duties and responsibilities

The preferred weekly commitment is 20 hours per week, but candidates can indicate desired commitment levels between 5 and 30 hours per week.

Around 75% of the workload should be spent on research, and 25% on queer advocacy and diversity and inclusion work.

The primary focus of this position will be conducting research, creating policies, and making guides/doing advocacy work.

Applicants will be asked to submit essay proposals for what they want to do with their time as a researcher. Topics include but are not limited to:

Drafting policies and responding to requests for information (RFIs)
Documenting biases, particularly against queer people, in datasets and models
Best practices for datasets and models that include or interact with queer people
Describing frameworks for creating queer AI
Working with conferences and other partners to improve inclusion practices
Creating guides on inclusive practices
Improving and understanding our aid programs, creating new aid programs
Demographics of queer researchers, areas and causes of attrition

The DEI and advocacy part will likely include most of:

Mentoring new volunteers
Coordinating, fully or in part, sponsorship by outside groups
Writing grants
Chairing or co-chairing workshops or socials
Administering aid programs

You are expected to lead your research projects and collaborate with researchers and queer theory scholars. Ideally, you should mentor and collaborate with underprivileged folks from QueerInAI to develop queer participatory research projects.

The essay proposal should also indicate D&I and advocacy work that the candidate is planning to undertake.

Experience

Strong applicants will have deep connections to queer and other marginalized and minoritized communities, and a passion for research or programs to help those communities.

Applicants should have experience with research: conducting literature reviews, scoping projects, building and managing collaborations, qualitative and/or quantitative techniques, technical writing and presentation, conducting research in partnership with and centering impacted communities. We expect applicants to lead an independent participatory research program and collaborate and mentor marginalized queer members.

Applicants should also have experience with organizing: working in primarily volunteer-run organizations, anti-hierarchical organizing tactics, mentoring, and excellent listening skills.

Other important characteristics include: an unwavering belief in equity and diversity, strong work ethic, personal integrity, emotional intelligence, excellent communication skills, organizational skills, strategic thinking, planning skills, and a commitment to the mission and values of Queer in AI.

Research proposal / Essay

Applicants have to send in their CV and an essay. For this position, the essay will include details on what research they want to pursue. This can also include your research experience, consisting of examples of past research, not limited to just published papers but also including essays, websites, art, feedback, or other research outputs.

The essay can contain proposals on topics like:

datasets, data collection, data documentation, and data bias
model bias
impacts of AI, ML, NLP, CV, and robotics on queer people
queer theories of AI and technology
queering of AI, ML, NLP, CV, and robotics
using technology, especially AI, to help queer people
building social, organizational, and technical infrastructure to help queer people in and outside of AI
D&I initiatives in academia and tech
Outreach and inclusive policies

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Administrator (DEIA)

The DEIA serves as an advancement leader of Queer in AI and acts as a representative in all related events and functions. The primary focus of this post will be the focus on DEI initiatives of Queer in AI. This includes developing the Queer in AI community, organizing events, administrating Queer in AI initiatives, drafting inclusive policies and so on. This position reports to the self-accountable committee.

Duties and Responsibilities:

The preferred weekly commitment is 10 hours per week, however, candidates can indicate desired commitment levels between 5-30 hours per work.

The primary focus of this post will be on DEI initiatives of Queer in AI. This includes developing the Queer in AI community, organizing events, administrating Queer in AI initiatives, drafting inclusive policies and so on.

The DEI admin work includes the following:

Establishing collaboration medium: Regular meetups and events for folks to connect and collaborate. This involves maintaining slack, mailing list, organizers’ and non-organizers’ meetings, open calendars etc.
Inclusivity: Onboarding, orientation, code of conduct, mentorship, idea sharing / feedback, open science, invite members from marginalized groups, develop a potential speaker list
Community: Kinship, support groups, events, socials, workshops
Discoverability: Website, social media, mailing list, blogs, preprints, press coverage, collaborations
Funding: Writing grants, interacting with potential sponsors, developing sponsorship policy.

Experience:

D&I Organizing: Applicants should have experience with organizing: working in primarily volunteer-run organizations, anti-hierarchical organizing tactics, mentoring, and excellent listening skills.

Understanding of D&I issues: Applicants should have a thorough understanding of underlying problems that marginalized communities face in academia and tech. Applicants should have some experience in laying out surveys, interviews and feedback platforms to gather such issues.

Outreach ability: Applicants should have deep connections to queer and other marginalized and minoritized communities, activist groups and working groups. Applicants should also strive to make connections, research on deep outreach approaches and bridge the communication with communities.

Advocacy Proposal / Essay

Applicants have to send their CV and an essay. For this position, the essay will include details on what queer advocacy and D&I measures they want to pursue. This can also include your D&I experience, consisting of examples of past volunteering, mentoring, leadership, building queer unions, research on D&I and obstacles and can include materials like essays, websites, art, feedback, or other outputs.

The essay can contain proposals on topics like:

queering of AI, ML, NLP, CV, and robotics
building social, organizational, and technical infrastructure to help queer people in and outside of AI
D&I initiatives in academia and tech
Outreach and inclusive policies

Other details regarding the positions:

Salary and benefits

The salary is determined on an hourly basis, which is 35 USD per hour (non-negotiable). The candidate will have leeway as to the weekly commitment in the number of hours, and the contract will be finalized based on this. You can choose to have a weekly commitment between 5 and 30 hours per week, but it would be preferable if you commit 20 hours per week (for RAE) and 10 hours per week (for DEIA).

Based on the number of hours committed, Queer in AI can provide the following benefits (negotiable):

Travel and registration funding for conferences and queer events
Compensation for research equipment
Queer-inclusive health insurance, approximately 350 USD per month
Paid leaves (1 hour accrued for every 10 hours worked)

Employment will be formally managed by oSTEM, specifically the oSTEM CEO, and by extension the oSTEM Executive Board, which includes one of our Queer in AI core organizers.

For US residents, currently, we will reimburse the cost of health insurance that you purchase (350 USD per month for 20 hr/wk). Meanwhile, oSTEM is in process of providing queer-inclusive health insurance (ideally within 1-2 months). For non-US residents, we will reimburse the cost of health insurance.

Hiring Process

The hiring process will be open.

Hiring committee: Based on the open call, Queer in AI has formed a hiring committee, a jury to decide and discuss during the hiring process.
Eligibility check (1-2 days): Right after the deadline, Queer in AI organizers will organize the submissions and discard ineligible submissions. This process will be documented. The hiring committee will be overseeing this.
First pass (1 week): Folks in the hiring committee will vote and comment on who should be selected for the interview.
Interviews (1-2 weeks): Interview will be done asynchronously via Queer in AI slack, where candidates will discuss their proposal and objectives with the hiring committee in detail.
Debrief meeting: After the interview, a debrief meeting will be done where final criteria will be discussed by the hiring committee. The criteria for the final selection of who to hire should be documented/made available to all members.
Final vote (1 week): Hiring committee has to give their recommendations to each candidate on who to hire based on the criteria discussed.

Accountability and reporting

Queer in AI has no hierarchy and is a volunteer-first organization. The hires are expected to be accountable to Queer in AI volunteers as a whole. The hires should decide how they would hold themselves accountable, and how they want to report to Queer in AI volunteers. Upon hiring, hires can pick 3-5 Queer in AI volunteers with whom they want to collaborate closely, and form a self-accountable committee. The proposed accountability and reporting methods are negotiable. The hiring committee will approve this selection.

Physical Demands:

Must be able to remain in a stationary position for 3-5 hours (approximate) a day

Attending remote meetings ranging from 30-120 minutes which involves a considerable amount of communication, interaction and note-taking

Light (<20lbs) lifting during in-person workshops and socials (completely optional)

Hiring Rationale:

Queer in AI has to do an overwhelming amount of work:

We have worked for years with conferences where we have events to make them inclusive, but even helping with those conferences every year is a lot of work, not to mention all the conferences we aren’t at.
ML, AI, and NLP are and will increasingly impact queer people. Biometrics, exclusionary datasets and models, data- and ML- empowered surveillance all threaten to reinforce cis- and heteronormativity, give more tools to those oppressing our communities, and exclude our historically online and technology-empowered communities from the future development of technology. There are many powerful technology organizations that disregard queer people or are actively trying to harm them. These organizations have hundreds of thousands of employees, billions in cash, vast lobbying operations and networks, and control of or access to massive sections of the internet. We need to be as loud as we can if we want to build a future we like: publishing research, creating policies, fighting for change, and organizing queer spaces.
We organize a grad application program, undergraduate initiatives, and faculty application mentorship, all of which are high-impact but have significant administrative overhead.
We are funded by sponsors, which requires significant work to maintain. We are currently not as responsive to sponsors as we would like to be, and we are not reaching out to or responding to many potential sponsors due to the work required.
We could be applying for more grants, but we currently don’t have the capacity to pursue this.

While QinAI is good at involving lots of people, many QinAI volunteers will spend 5-20+ hours a week on QinAI for extended periods. At the same time, these volunteers are themselves marginalized and very junior, often juggling school, research, and jobs. Hiring you would reduce the overall organizing burden on our volunteers, while allowing us to pay you to help with our important work.

This job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties, or responsibilities that are required of the employee. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change or new ones may be assigned at any time with or without notice.

Equal Employment Opportunity (AAP/EEO) statement:

oSTEM has established and adopted an Equal Employment Opportunity Employment policy (“EEO”), which is part of oSTEM’s Human Resources Policy. The purpose of this EEO policy is to ensure that all employment decisions are made on a non-discriminatory basis, and without regard to sex, race, color, caste, age, national origin, religion, disability, neurodivergence, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender presentation, citizenship, pregnancy or maternity, veteran status, or any other status protected by applicable national, federal, state, or local law. In some cases, local laws and regulations may provide greater protections than those outlined above. Associates will be covered by the laws of their local jurisdiction.

oSTEM will recruit, hire and promote without regard to sex, race, color, age, national origin, religion, disability, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, citizenship, pregnancy or veteran status, or any other status protected by applicable law.
oSTEM will make all decisions of employment with consideration to appropriate principles of Equal Employment and Affirmative Action.
Promotional opportunities will be filled based on merit, experience, and other job-related criteria.
Personnel actions, such as compensation, benefits, transfers, layoffs, company-sponsored training programs, and social and recreational programs, will be administered on a non-discriminatory basis.

Principal and direct responsibility for the successful implementation of this policy in a uniform manner has been assigned to the Executive Director However, within our respective areas of responsibility, all supervisory personnel must share in the responsibility to ensure our Company’s compliance with the Equal Employment Opportunity Plan. Any employee who has a question or concern regarding any type of discrimination or harassment is encouraged to bring it to the attention of their manager. For information regarding harassment or discrimination awareness and reporting, please consult the Human Resources Policy.