Senior AI/ML Engineer – Applied Computer Vision

Senior AI/ML Engineer - Applied Computer Vision

The Opportunity

We’re looking for experienced Senior AI/ML Engineers with strong expertise in Computer Vision and deep learning to join a growing engineering team developing advanced AI technologies for defence, security and other high-performance applications.

You’ll help design, build and deploy next-generation Computer Vision systems using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Vision Transformers and enhanced Deep Neural Network (eDNN) technology.

This is a hands-on engineering role combining research, algorithm development, production software engineering and customer-facing AI delivery. You’ll work alongside software engineers, researchers and technical leadership to transform cutting-edge research into robust, deployable products for demanding operational environments.

You’ll also have the opportunity to influence AI platform architecture, contribute to customer programmes and help shape future product development.

About the Technology

The team is developing enhanced Deep Neural Networks (eDNNs), designed to bridge current CNN and Vision Transformer architectures with emerging neuroscience-inspired AI, including Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs).

The technology combines advances in deep learning, efficient inference and biologically inspired computation to improve robustness, generalisation and performance in complex environments.

Systems are designed for deployment across large-scale imagery exploitation platforms and edge systems, where accuracy, efficiency and reliability are critical.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop and optimise advanced Computer Vision algorithms using CNNs, Vision Transformers and related deep learning architectures.
• Develop novel neural network architectures, training strategies, loss functions, optimisation techniques and evaluation metrics for challenging problems.
• Translate state-of-the-art AI research into robust, production-ready software.
• Build scalable training, validation, evaluation and inference pipelines.
• Optimise models for accuracy, robustness, latency and deployment across edge and cloud platforms.
• Contribute to the development and evolution of enhanced Deep Neural Network capabilities.
• Integrate emerging AI techniques into production systems.
• Deliver customer solutions for defence and other high-performance applications.
• Contribute to technical planning, software architecture and engineering best practices.
• Support technical discussions with customers and collaborate with commercial teams where appropriate.
• Work closely with multidisciplinary teams to deliver reliable, production-quality AI systems.

Essential Skills and Experience

Machine Learning and Computer Vision

• Strong commercial or practical experience developing deep learning solutions using PyTorch . TensorFlow experience is also welcomed.
• Excellent understanding of modern CNN and Vision Transformer architectures.
• Experience designing and implementing customised neural networks, loss functions, optimisation methods and evaluation metrics.
• Strong understanding of modern Computer Vision techniques and the current state of the art.
• Experience implementing and adapting methods from recent research publications.
• Strong understanding of model training, validation, hyperparameter optimisation and performance evaluation.

Software Engineering

• Expert-level Python development skills.
• Experience building reliable, maintainable, production-quality software.
• Strong software engineering practices, including testing, version control, code review and CI/CD.
• Experience developing scalable machine learning pipelines and deployment workflows.
• Familiarity with Linux and Windows development environments.

Professional Experience

• Demonstrable experience delivering production AI systems.
• Ability to work independently while collaborating effectively within multidisciplinary teams.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving and debugging skills.
• Strong communication skills when working with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Desirable Skills and Experience

Experience in one or more of the following areas would be advantageous:

• Object detection, tracking, segmentation, pose estimation or multi-object localisation.
• Designing or modifying CNN and Vision Transformer architectures to improve performance.
• Multimodal perception systems.
• Large-scale aerial, satellite or Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) imagery.
• Real-time AI systems and edge deployment.
• GPU optimisation and inference acceleration.
• Docker, Kubernetes and Kubeflow.
• MLOps and model deployment pipelines.
• Synthetic data generation and simulation, including Unreal Engine, NVIDIA Omniverse or similar platforms.
• Distributed training and large-scale model optimisation.
• Collaboration with AI researchers.
• Experience working on defence, government or national security programmes.

Education

An MSc or PhD in Computer Vision, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotics or a related discipline would be desirable.

Equivalent commercial experience developing advanced AI systems will also be considered.

Security Requirements

Candidates must be eligible to obtain UK security clearance.

Candidates should be able to achieve Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) clearance, with Security Check (SC) clearance or higher desirable.

What’s on Offer?

• The opportunity to develop advanced AI technology rather than simply make incremental improvements to existing applications.
• A hands-on role spanning AI research, algorithm development and production engineering.
• The opportunity to influence technical direction and AI platform architecture.
• Close collaboration with experienced AI researchers and software engineers.
• The chance to contribute to advanced Computer Vision, deep learning and neuroscience-inspired AI.
• The opportunity to see your work integrated into operational systems supporting demanding defence and security applications.
• Meaningful technical challenges across model performance, robustness, efficient inference and deployment.

Employment Details

• Employment type: Full-time, permanent.
• Contract opportunities may also be available.
• Recruitment is ongoing, with a streamlined interview process.