Yes, you may be contractually forbidden from doing such work. You need to have a lawyer review the IP assignment clauses in whatever you signed. It may be tha

Yes, you may be contractually forbidden from doing such work. You need to have a lawyer review the IP assignment clauses in whatever you signed. It may be that there is no such thing as "outside of my job." They may own everything you do regardless of when or how you do it, which means their policies apply for everything, all the time. Even a reasonable IP assignment, that only assigns ownership to the company of work that is directly related to your responsibilities, might conflict, since you'd be making an open source project to help with your responsibilities. Talk with a lawyer.