Research Engineer – Fundamental AI Research

Two contract opportunities

Location: London – hybrid, three days per week onsite

Contract: 12 months

Hours: 40 hours per week

Start date: ASAP

Rates:

• Research Engineer II: £38 per hour PAYE – approximately 2–4 years’ relevant experience
• Research Engineer III: £45 per hour PAYE – approximately 5–7 years’ relevant experience

We are recruiting two Research Engineers at different experience levels to join the Fundamental AI Research team of a leading global technology company.

You will work as a fully embedded member of an advanced research team, combining hands-on machine-learning research with software and infrastructure engineering. The projects focus on recursive self-improvement: developing AI systems that can help build and improve other AI systems.

The work will involve large language models, reinforcement learning, synthetic data, multi-agent systems and the development of safe, effective environments for AI agents.

Key responsibilities

• Conduct cutting-edge research across machine learning and large language model systems.
• Build reinforcement-learning environments and generate high-quality synthetic data.
• Research multi-agent systems in which multiple AI agents collaborate on complex projects.
• Develop robust sandboxes, pipelines and infrastructure for AI agents.
• Design tools and methods that advance the capabilities and performance of large language models.
• Write high-quality Python code and deliver solutions alongside researchers and engineers.
• Run complex experiments involving large AI models and datasets.
• Evaluate academic research and apply relevant findings to practical experiments.
• Analyse results with scientific rigour to understand why different approaches succeed or fail.
• Communicate research plans, progress and findings to technical and cross-functional stakeholders.
• Adapt effectively as research priorities evolve.