{"id":3818939,"url":"https://alion.io/job/abertay-mlai-research-engineer","title":"ML/AI Research Engineer","company":{"id":1766363,"name":"Abertay","domain":"abertay.ac.uk","url":"https://alion.io/company/abertay","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"iTrent","truth_index":null},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":null,"employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["United Kingdom"],"countries":["GB"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":39560,"max":57666,"currency":"GBP","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":77687},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"Diffusion Models","optional":false},{"name":"Fine-tuning","optional":false},{"name":"LoRA","optional":false},{"name":"Multimodal AI","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":false},{"name":"World Models","optional":false},{"name":"PEFT","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-05T16:59:08Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-05","last_verified_at":"2026-11-06T11:24:39Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":0,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":0},"description":"ML/AI Research Engineer - CoSTAR National Lab\nGrade 7 or 8 (£39,560.18 - £57,666.28), dependent on experience\nFull-time, fixed-term until March 2029 (flexible and remote working options available)\nAbertay 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.\nCoSTAR 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.\nThe 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.\nThis 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.\nWe 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.\nSome 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.\nYou 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.\nWhat you will be doing (see job description for full details):\nWorking 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. \nTurning 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. \nExtending the Lab's existing toolkits, including a unified front end for multiple world models and a suite of speech, image and 3D tools. \nDeploying and hosting models and tools on the Lab's infrastructure so partner companies can use them for R&D, testing and evaluation. \nWorking 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. \nCollaborating with external companies to understand their pipelines, trial tools with them and feed findings back into development and research. \nContributing 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. \nYou should apply if you:\nHave 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. \nAre motivated by seeing your research applied: published, and in use by real productions. \nHave 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. \nHave a strong command of AI and software engineering fundamentals: architecture; training, fine-tuning and adaptation (e.g. LoRA); design patterns; testing; and best practice. \nAre 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. \nEnjoy working in a fast-moving, agile environment, both independently and in multidisciplinary teams with creatives, researchers and industry partners. \nBring a strong passion for emerging creative technologies and a disciplined, professional approach to collaborative R&D. \nIn your cover letter, please tell us about anything you have built that you are proud of.\nHybrid 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.\nThe candidate brief can be found on the top of the page which details the job description, person specification and application details.\nIf you believe you have the skills and experience for this exciting and rewarding role, please submit your application by clicking apply online below. \nPlease note that we will only accept applications through our online recruitment system.\nCommitted to Equal Opportunities\nAbertay University is a Scottish Registered Charity,\nNo: SC016040\nSalary: Grade 7 (£39,560.18 - £46,969.76) or\nGrade 8 (£48,337.08 - £57,666.28), depending on experience","description_format":"text","description_chars":5657,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"phd","optional":true},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Hybrid work"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United Kingdom","iso":"GB","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Higher Education"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-05T16:59:08Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":86,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.86,"p_room":1,"age_days":0,"expected_fill_days":25,"reasons":["conf:3","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-11-06T05:58:05Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":77687,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/abertay-mlai-research-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/abertay-mlai-research-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-06T14:54:46Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":27712,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-07T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":1766363},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=1766363"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fabertay-mlai-research-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fabertay-mlai-research-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fabertay-mlai-research-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/abertay-mlai-research-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fabertay-mlai-research-engineer"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3818939}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"abertay.ac.uk","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3818939},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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