System Research Engineer

System Research Engineer (Contractor) - Edinburugh

Role Overview

The Systems Infrastructure Research (SIR) Lab conducts research focused on next-generation data centre infrastructure. The team works at the intersection of academic research and practical systems engineering, turning emerging ideas into working prototypes and industrial solutions.

The team is seeking contract Research Scientists / Systems Research Engineers with experience or strong academic foundations in computer systems and AI infrastructure. The role is particularly suited to recent PhD graduates, as well as strong BSc or MSc graduates who want to build research experience in an industrial environment.

Relevant technical areas include operating systems, distributed systems, cloud computing and machine learning systems.

Key Responsibilities

• Prototype development: Design, build and evaluate proof-of-concept systems to test new research ideas in realistic environments.
• Systems performance: Profile, analyse and optimise operating systems and large-scale distributed systems across heterogeneous hardware such as CPUs and NPUs.
• Research: Investigate new approaches to systems and AI infrastructure and convert significant results into publications for leading academic conferences and journals.
• Technical documentation: Document research methodology, system architecture, implementation decisions and experimental results so that work is reproducible and can be shared internally.
• Technical communication: Present research progress, experimental findings and performance results clearly to technical teams and internal stakeholders.

Required Skills and Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline.
• Understanding of research methodology and experimental evaluation.
• Strong knowledge in at least one of the following:
• Operating systems
• Distributed systems
• Cloud computing
• Machine learning systems
• Strong programming ability, particularly in systems-level languages such as C or C++ .
• Ability to work effectively within a collaborative research and engineering team.
• Clear technical communication skills.

Preferred Experience

• PhD specialising in operating systems, distributed systems or machine learning systems.
• Publications at recognised systems or machine-learning conferences, such as NSDI, OSDI, EuroSys, SoCC, NeurIPS, ICML or ICLR .
• Experience designing, deploying or maintaining large-scale production or cloud systems.
• Practical understanding of scalability, reliability, systems performance and performance optimisation .