{"id":40729,"url":"https://alion.io/job/harmattan-machine-learning-engineer-foundational","title":"Machine Learning Engineer - Foundational","company":{"id":8839,"name":"Harmattan AI","domain":"harmattan.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/harmattan","size_band":"501-1000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":85,"open_postings":15,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.4,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":84,"computed_at":"2026-10-08T05:49:30Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"senior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Zurich, Switzerland"],"countries":["CH"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":112000,"max_usd":280000,"period":"year","method":"global_role_cell_scaled_by_country","sample_n":1757},"experience_years_min":5,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"CLIP","optional":false},{"name":"Computer Vision","optional":false},{"name":"Contrastive Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Edge AI","optional":false},{"name":"Knowledge Distillation","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Model Distillation","optional":false},{"name":"Multimodal AI","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch C++","optional":false},{"name":"Rust","optional":false},{"name":"Self-Supervised Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Transformers","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-06-18T09:17:53Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-06-18","last_verified_at":"2026-10-09T01:59:49Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":112,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":112},"description":"About Us\nHarmattan AI is a next-generation defense prime building autonomous and scalable defense systems. Following the close of a $200M Series B, valuing the company at $1.4 billion, we are expanding our teams and capabilities to deliver mission-critical systems to allied forces.\nOur work is guided by clear values: building technologies with real-world impact, pursuing excellence in everything we do, setting ambitious goals, and taking on the hardest technical challenges. We operate in a demanding environment where rigor, ownership, and execution are expected.\nAbout the Role\nAs a Machine Learning Engineer on our Foundational team in Paris, you will build the \"brain\" of our tactical robots. You will design and scale large-scale, multi-modal foundational models that learn robust representations of the battlefield using Self-Supervised Learning (SSL) from massive amounts of unlabelled Electro-Optical (EO) and Infrared (IR) data. Your work provides the critical foundational weights that our Edge AI team distills into hyper-accurate models running on tactical hardware.\nResponsibilities\nMulti-Modal SSL Architecture Design: Design neural network architectures (Vision Transformers) and loss functions (Masked Autoencoders, Contrastive Learning) to jointly learn from paired and unpaired EO and IR data.\n\nDistributed Training Infrastructure: Manage and optimise training pipelines across multi-node GPU clusters, handling mixed-precision training and data loading.\n\nRepresentation Evaluation: Develop metrics and linear-probing benchmarks to prove the latent space captures useful semantic features before distillation.\n\nData Strategy: Audit existing EO/IR data lakes and implement cross-attention mechanisms to fuse diverse sensor features.\n\nCross-Functional Collaboration: Sync with Data Engineers on ingestion pipelines and collaborate with the Edge AI team to ensure high-performance model handoffs.\nCandidate Requirements\n\nEducational Background: A PhD or a highly research-focused MS in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, or Applied Mathematics.\n\nProven Experience: Minimum of 5-6 years of experience for senior levels. Experience training and scaling deep learning vision models (ViTs, CNNs) from scratch in multi-GPU/multi-node environments. Successful application of novel SSL or multi-modal architectures (e.g., CLIP, MAE, DINO) to real-world, non-standard imaging data (IR, SAR, or hyperspectral).\n\nTechnical Proficiency: Hardcore PyTorch engineering skills combined with deep mathematical intuition for representation learning. Knowledge of system-level languages (C++, Rust, or Go) and resource optimisation for edge computing.\n\nComplexity & Leadership: Ability to architect state machines for fault-tolerant data pipelines and mediate technical trade-offs between hardware and algorithm teams.\n\nCommitment & Mindset: 100% dedication to Harmattan AI’s mission of providing an ethical defence edge to allied countries. A hybrid researcher-engineer mindset that treats data quality as seriously as algorithm design\n\nWe look forward to hearing how you can help shape the future of autonomous defense systems at Harmattan AI.","description_format":"text","description_chars":3164,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":5,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"master","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Military Drones","Defense Manufacturing","Defense AI"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-06-18T09:17:53Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":34,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.784,"p_room":0.44,"age_days":111,"expected_fill_days":84,"reasons":["conf:0","velocity","win:tail","crowd:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-08T05:49:30Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/harmattan-machine-learning-engineer-foundational","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/harmattan-machine-learning-engineer-foundational.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-09T02:47:15Z","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","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":1130,"day_limit":5000,"remaining_today":3870,"minute_limit":60,"resets_at":"2026-10-10T00:00:00Z"}},"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":8839},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=8839"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fharmattan-machine-learning-engineer-foundational"},{"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%2Fharmattan-machine-learning-engineer-foundational"},{"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%2Fharmattan-machine-learning-engineer-foundational"},{"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/harmattan-machine-learning-engineer-foundational\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fharmattan-machine-learning-engineer-foundational"}]}