Lead Engineer - Machine Learning

Are you an experienced Machine Learning Engineer with a track record of building and scaling production AI systems?

Join an ambitious early-stage technology company building the next generation of AI-native productivity and workflow applications. This is an opportunity to lead the development of large-scale ML systems that power intelligent products, working at the intersection of research, engineering and real-world user experiences.

About The Role

As Lead Machine Learning Engineer, you will own the execution layer of the company's intelligence platform, transforming research and model capabilities into reliable, scalable production systems.

You will work across the full machine learning lifecycle, from data pipelines and training systems through evaluation, inference and deployment. This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who enjoys solving complex technical challenges while driving practical outcomes that directly improve product experiences.

What You'll Own

Machine Learning Systems

• Own end-to-end ML systems across data, training, evaluation, inference and deployment.
• Build and evolve training and fine-tuning pipelines for modern AI models.
• Design scalable systems that support continuous model improvement.
• Drive the transition of research outputs into production-ready capabilities.

Evaluation & Reliability

• Design evaluation frameworks measuring:
  • Model capability
  • Robustness
  • Reliability
  • Safety
  • Real-world product performance
• Establish quality standards and testing methodologies.
• Monitor model behaviour and identify performance regressions.
• Drive measurable improvements through continuous iteration.

Inference & Infrastructure

• Architect high-performance inference systems.
• Optimise latency, throughput, GPU utilisation and infrastructure efficiency.
• Improve reliability and scalability of production AI services.
• Support deployment and monitoring of large-scale ML workloads.

Data & Platform Engineering

• Build and maintain pipelines for real-world and synthetic training data.
• Ensure data quality, reproducibility and operational efficiency.
• Design systems that support long-term model development and experimentation.
• Improve observability across the ML stack.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Partner closely with research, product and engineering teams.
• Make pragmatic technical decisions balancing performance, cost and reliability.
• Help establish engineering standards and ML best practices.
• Support technical execution across multiple initiatives.

What We're Looking For

Experience

• Experience building and shipping production machine learning systems.
• Proven track record operating ML workloads at scale.
• Experience turning research concepts into scalable products.
• Strong experience with modern large-model architectures and workflows.

Technical Skills

• Deep understanding of:
  • Model training
  • Fine-tuning
  • Evaluation
  • Inference optimisation
  • Production deployment
• Strong software engineering fundamentals.
• Experience with GPU-based training and inference systems.
• Strong understanding of ML infrastructure and system architecture.
• Excellent debugging and performance optimisation skills.

Leadership Qualities

• Strong technical judgement.
• Comfortable operating in ambiguous environments.
• High standards for reliability and production quality.
• Bias towards action, experimentation and continuous improvement.
• Ability to mentor engineers and elevate technical standards.

Technology Stack

• Python
• PyTorch
• JAX
• GPU-based training systems
• Large-scale inference infrastructure

Success In This Role

• Research innovations consistently translate into production improvements.
• Training, evaluation and inference systems remain scalable and reliable.
• Production incidents are identified and resolved quickly.
• Model improvements are measurable and aligned to user value.
• Engineering teams can move quickly while maintaining quality and stability.

Why Join?

• Work on cutting-edge AI and machine learning systems.
• Influence both technical strategy and execution.
• Build products designed for large-scale real-world impact.
• Join a highly talented, fast-moving team.
• Significant ownership and autonomy.
• Opportunity to shape the future of AI-native products.

Location: Remote from UK / Hybrid
Employment Type: Full-time
Salary Range: £90,000 - £110,000 GBP per annum

If you're a Machine Learning leader who enjoys building scalable AI systems and delivering production impact, we'd love to hear from you. Apply now or email Richard Fisher - rf@skillsearch.com

Years of experience and salary levels are shown purely as a guide. We will only consider applications from candidates that can demonstrate the skills or experience required for the role.

Please be aware that while we would love to respond to every application we receive, due to high numbers we cannot guarantee this. We do however appreciate any time you invest into the application and will make sure to get in touch should anything in future more closely fit your skillset.