Principal Software Engineer (AI/ML)

Overview

In this AI/ML-focused software engineering role, you will contribute to cutting-edge defence and aerospace software by applying AI/ML techniques to deployable solutions. You’ll collaborate with systems engineers on research projects, delivering high-integrity software within a regulated environment. The role spans the full software lifecycle in Agile settings, emphasizing scalable pipelines, data security, and responsible AI. You will help shape advanced AI capabilities for mission-critical systems, across civilian and military projects.

Pay / Benefits

• Time to recharge and up to 12 flexi-days
• Pension scheme with up to 15% employer contribution
• Mental health support and financial advice
• Free access to 4,000+ online courses (Coursera/LinkedIn Learning)
• Bonus scheme for eligible employees
• Flexible benefits up to 500 annually (private healthcare, discounts, gym)

Responsibilities

• Contribute to delivery of AI/ML-enabled software for defence/aerospace projects
• Support systems engineers on research initiatives while developing deployable software
• Work within Agile projects across the full software lifecycle
• Build scalable pipelines including APIs, vector databases, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)
• Design and test prompts; assess accuracy, bias, and robustness of LLM outputs
• Curate datasets and manage embeddings with strong focus on security and privacy
• Apply governance, security, and compliance considerations for data and AI deployment
• Familiarity with mathematical libraries for signal, image, and data processing; awareness of HPC and parallel processing

Key requirements

• Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline
• Experience delivering high-integrity software in regulated environments
• Proficiency with PyTorch and TensorFlow; experience with model integration
• Strong foundation in AI/ML: transformers, tokenisation, embeddings, LLM fine-tuning
• Experience building APIs and scalable data pipelines; use of vector databases and RAG
• Experience in dataset curation, embeddings management, and privacy/safety practices
• Prompt engineering skills: design, test, improve prompts, measure outputs for accuracy and bias
• Awareness of AI agents planning, reasoning and autonomous actions
• Understanding of governance, security, and compliance for data and AI deployment
• Knowledge of mathematical libraries and high-performance computing concepts
• Security clearance eligibility (BPSS, NSV/SC/DV)
• Willingness to learn and develop in a complex, regulated environment

• Willingness to learn and develop
• Collaborative mindset
• Problem-solving and analytical thinking
• PyTorch
• TensorFlow
• Model integration tools

…