Job Summary

Huawei UKRD Edinburgh Office is seeking a Software Research Engineer to join our Retrieval and Agent Intelligence (RAI) research team, with a core focus on advancing cutting-edge agentic AI technologies. The ideal candidate will have proven experience in research-driven environments, track record of collaboration with research teams, and hands-on involvement in the design, development and iteration of research prototypes and production-ready systems.

Our work centers on building novel, robust and scalable agentic AI capabilities, spanning agent memory, autonomous planning, long-horizon reasoning, multi-agent collaboration, self-evolution and knowledge-augmented intelligence. You should have solid foundations in LLM/NLP, machine learning and software engineering pipelines, with a rigorous approach to validation and a strong drive for system optimization. This role operates in a highly collaborative setting, working closely with the RAI team and cross-border research teams, so excellent communication skills are essential.

Key Responsibilities

As a Software Research Engineer, you will collaborate with world-class researchers to design, build and refine high-quality research prototypes and production-grade services centered on agentic AI. Given the cutting-edge nature of our work, strong analytical thinking, problem-solving capabilities and the ability to contribute original solutions are critical to success in this role.

A successful applicant will be responsible to:

• Serving as the critical bridge between abstract AI research and robust, production-grade software architecture, translating state-of-the-art agentic AI findings into scalable, reliable engineering systems.
• Deeply advancing core agentic AI technologies including agent memory mechanisms, coding agents, model routing, recursive self-improvement (RSI), dynamic context compression and advanced goal & state management. Continuously enhance agents’ core capabilities in proactive service delivery, self-evolution and long-horizon task execution, to enable intelligent agents for information acquisition, code generation, office collaboration and social & entertainment scenarios.
• Driving end-to-end engineering delivery of agent systems, covering data preparation, algorithm design, model implementation, system engineering, product scaling and post-launch support.
• Conducting forward-looking technology analysis and roadmap planning for agentic AI; collaborating with leading experts and research teams to explore frontier directions such as agent self-evolution, multi-agent coordination and advanced code generation, and strengthening our technological competitiveness and industry influence.
• Contributing to open-source software development and community building in the agentic AI domain.
• Supporting the deployment, operation and continuous iteration of developed agent systems and related services.

This job description is only an outline of the tasks, responsibilities and outcomes required of the role. The jobholder will carry out any other duties as may be reasonably required by his/her line manager. The job description and personal specification may be reviewed on an ongoing basis in accordance with the changing needs of Huawei Research and Development UK Limited.

Person Specification

Required

• Degree in in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Statistics, Mathematics or a related technical discipline.
• Minimum 3 years of hands-on project experience in software engineering, with a track record of delivering complex technical systems.
• Solid algorithmic research foundation and strong code implementation skills; deep understanding of large language model principles, agent architecture design, cognitive reasoning, and decision-making & planning mechanisms.
• Algorithmic mindset for addressing non-deterministic and open-ended research problems.
• Proficiency in Test Driven Development and modern software engineering best practices (clean, reusable, high-quality code, CI/CD pipelines).
• Hands-on expertise with Python, Docker and Git.
• Proactive learning attitude and ability to quickly master new technologies and research domains.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with ability to work effectively in distributed, cross-cultural teams.

Desired

• Prior experience in agent system R&D, including but not limited to agent memory, autonomous planning, multi-agent collaboration, environment interaction, and long-horizon task execution.
• Experience applying reinforcement learning in complex decision-making scenarios.
• In-depth knowledge of LLM and agent-related technologies: hallucination mitigation, knowledge distillation, tool use, reasoning & planning, and agent memory systems.
• Knowledge of knowledge graphs and knowledge retrieval techniques as enabling capabilities for agentic systems.
• Knowledge of modern multi-modal ingestion frameworks.
• Research background in NLP, machine learning or related fields.
• Publication track record in top-tier conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, CVPR) in relevant domains.
• Proven contributions to open-source projects, awards in high-level AI competitions, or research internship experience at renowned institutions.