ML/AI Research Engineer

ML/AI Research Engineer - CoSTAR National Lab

Grade 7 or 8 (£39,560.18 - £57,666.28), dependent on experience

Full-time, fixed-term until March 2029 (flexible and remote working options available)

Abertay is a modern university with a global outlook, rooted in its local and national communities. We have made our mark with high quality, well-directed teaching and research, and a stimulating and enriching experience for our students.

CoSTAR National Lab for R&D in Creative Technology is the largest ever investment in creative industries R&D in UK history: a £51.1m programme led by Royal Holloway, University of London, to give the UK’s screen and performance industries the R&D infrastructure to compete globally. See more here.

The National R&D Lab places Equality, Diversity and Sustainability at the heart of all we do: from our team culture, to the research programmes we run, to how we collaborate with partners.

This is a unique opportunity to shape how the creative industries adopt and innovate with AI, from world models and generative AI to large language models and real-time multimodal tools. You will work with world-leading creative companies - from Pinewood to BT to Disguise to thousands of cutting-edge UK SMEs - helping them put new AI technologies to work across the screen and performance sectors.

We are looking for someone with a research-grade understanding of modern AI models who is driven to see them used. You’ll work hands-on with world models, LLMs, VLMs, and speech, image and 3D generation systems. That means adapting, fine-tuning and extending them where off-the-shelf won’t do, and turning them into bespoke tools and pipelines that creative companies actually use.

Some of this is building on our existing toolkits, some is evaluating and integrating emerging models, and some is original R&D where the sector’s needs go beyond what exists. The work spans film, virtual production, games and 3D, immersive experiences and live entertainment.

You will be based at Pinewood as part of the Prototyping team, collaborating closely with Abertay. You’ll work with developers, researchers and the leadership team in a creative, inclusive and dynamic environment.

What you will be doing (see job description for full details):

• Working with Abertay and CoSTAR staff and partners to evaluate, adapt and fine-tune emerging AI models - including world models, open-weight LLMs and multimodal generative AI (text, image, video, 2D/3D content) - getting under the hood of architectures, training pipelines and inference behaviour where off-the-shelf won't do.

• Turning these models into effective software, tools and prototypes for areas such as film and virtual production; games and 3D; augmented, virtual and extended reality; and immersive and live entertainment.

• Extending the Lab's existing toolkits, including a unified front end for multiple world models and a suite of speech, image and 3D tools.

• Deploying and hosting models and tools on the Lab's infrastructure so partner companies can use them for R&D, testing and evaluation.

• Working in a multidisciplinary innovation team of content creators, creative technologists, designers, research producers, and academic and industry experts, delivering high-quality, performant code in line with project goals and delivery cycles.

• Collaborating with external companies to understand their pipelines, trial tools with them and feed findings back into development and research.

• Contributing to the Lab's wider research agenda, including technical reports and demos, and other R&D activities across the partner institutions of the CoSTAR National Lab.

You should apply if you:

• Have a research background in AI/ML (e.g. a PhD, a research MSc or equivalent industry R&D) with real depth in at least one of transformers, diffusion models, LLMs, VLMs, LAMs or world models.

• Are motivated by seeing your research applied: published, and in use by real productions.

• Have proven experience delivering research or production-quality AI/ML software, and have taken models beyond experiments, e.g. building tools, APIs or services that others have used.

• Have a strong command of AI and software engineering fundamentals: architecture; training, fine-tuning and adaptation (e.g. LoRA); design patterns; testing; and best practice.

• Are fluent in tools for AI, real-time and graphics pipelines, such as Python, PyTorch, GPU compute, model serving and networking. C++, real-time 3D or game engine experience is welcome but not essential.

• Enjoy working in a fast-moving, agile environment, both independently and in multidisciplinary teams with creatives, researchers and industry partners.

• Bring a strong passion for emerging creative technologies and a disciplined, professional approach to collaborative R&D.

In your cover letter, please tell us about anything you have built that you are proud of.

Hybrid working (3 days min in person) around our National Lab at Pinewood Studios (National Lab), with regular collaboration/visits to Abertay University (Dundee) and some other UK travel expected.

The candidate brief can be found on the top of the page which details the job description, person specification and application details.

If you believe you have the skills and experience for this exciting and rewarding role, please submit your application by clicking apply online below.

Please note that we will only accept applications through our online recruitment system.

Committed to Equal Opportunities

Abertay University is a Scottish Registered Charity,

No: SC016040

Salary: Grade 7 (£39,560.18 - £46,969.76) or

Grade 8 (£48,337.08 - £57,666.28), depending on experience