THE BESPOKE AI MODEL FACTORY opened its doors Thursday morning to a ribbon and a crowd, and opened its hiring pipeline at 11:01 a.m. to a job listing that went live on the factory’s website at the precise minute the ceremony concluded, as if the two events had been scheduled to be continuous, which they had.

“We wanted people to know on day one that the factory is growing,” said H.R. Director Patrice Dombrowicz. “Not someday. Not pending review. On day one.”

The listing covers 150 new positions across six job classifications, with starting wages ranging from $22 per hour for administrative support to $36 per hour for overnight supervisory roles. The entry-level Model Fitter position pays $24 per hour and, notably, lists “no experience required” as a requirement alongside a longer passage in the description that reads, in part: “We are looking for people who have done work where getting it right mattered more than getting it done fast. This might mean manufacturing work. It might mean healthcare. It might mean twenty years of teaching, or farming, or running a hardware counter. We do not require a specific credential. We require a specific quality of attention.”

Dombrowicz, when asked what that quality of attention looks like in practice, paused before answering.

“You know how some people, when you tell them something, actually hear it?” she said. “And other people hear it but they’re already thinking about what they’re going to say next? We want the people who actually hear it. That’s the job. You listen to what a client tells you. You hear what they haven’t said yet. You use both of those things to help the model start from the right place. Everything else we can teach.”

The factory currently employs 150 workers, all of whom went through a six-week training program that Dombrowicz designed with significant input from the factory’s Founding Technologist — who does not give interviews but who apparently has strong opinions about what a good first fitting session looks like. The training covers listening protocols, calibration procedures, the model’s self-reporting language, and what the training manual describes as “the ethics of personal AI ownership,” which addresses questions about privacy, dependency, and appropriate use that Dombrowicz says came up organically during the first round of fittings.

“People are very intimate with these things,” she said. “They tell them things they don’t tell other people. Our fitters need to understand that what they’re handling is not just technology. It’s trust.”

“The best cobblers wear their own shoes. The best tailors wear their own suits. The best model-fitters should have a model that knows them and that they know.”

Patrice Dombrowicz, H.R. Director

The benefits package attached to all full-time positions includes full health and dental coverage, a defined-contribution pension plan, and what Dombrowicz calls “the most unusual benefit in modern employment”: a complimentary Bespoke AI Model, fully fitted for the employee, provided at no cost after six months of employment.

“We want our workers to use the product they’re making,” she said. “Not as a perk. As a philosophy. You cannot fit something for someone else if you don’t understand what it’s like to have one. The model changes how you think. Our workers should know that from the inside.”

The factory operates on three shifts: 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., and 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. The third shift currently has the fewest workers and the most openings; the $36-per-hour supervisor role is the evening’s most prominently featured position. Dombrowicz said the overnight shift handles primarily calibration and quality review work — the slower, iterative work that benefits from quiet and continuity — and that it “attracts a specific kind of person who doesn’t mind the world being small for a while.”

Applications can be submitted at the factory’s front desk at 400 Commerce Avenue, Monday through Friday between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., or online at http://www.theinternetlives.net/jobs. Dombrowicz said the first round of interviews for the new positions will begin October 1, with hires starting in November.

“We want to be deliberate about it,” she said. “We are building a culture, not just filling a headcount. That takes a little longer. It’s worth the extra time.”

Phil Hafner covers business and employment for the Tribune. Apply for positions at theinternetlives.net/jobs or in person at 400 Commerce Ave. The Tribune’s business license number is 0023. We have been asked not to mention this.