{"id":3757495,"url":"https://alion.io/job/rowden-technologies-ltd-lead-machine-learning-engineer","title":"Lead Machine Learning Engineer","company":{"id":685499,"name":"Rowden Technologies Ltd.","domain":"rowdentech.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/rowdentech","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Pinpoint","truth_index":null},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Bristol, United Kingdom"],"countries":["GB"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Agile","optional":true},{"name":"AWS","optional":true},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":true},{"name":"Databricks","optional":true},{"name":"Docker","optional":true},{"name":"GCP","optional":true},{"name":"GitHub","optional":true},{"name":"Jira","optional":true},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":true},{"name":"MLFlow","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-03T17:26:07Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-03","last_verified_at":"2026-11-07T19:09:38Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":4,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":4},"description":"We’re building the UK's next generation engineering powerhouse, providing critical technology that strengthens national security and resilience.\n\nWe specialise in turning advances in sensing, AI, and communications into operational capability for the edge, where connectivity may be degraded or denied. Our work focuses on accelerating the deployment of technology, improving decision-making for frontline teams, and protecting people and critical assets in demanding environments.\n\nHeadquartered in Bristol, Rowden employs around 200 people and operates over 20,000 square feet of engineering and manufacturing facilities. We have a growing international footprint and are one of Europe’s fastest-growing engineering businesses.\nAbout the role\n\nAs part of this journey, we are growing our ML team rapidly. The team works end-to-end, from applied R&D to deployment, across deep learning, data engineering, large models and LLM/agentic systems. Our work spans R&D contracts with the MOD and wider government, deploying ML onto edge and embedded hardware, and the assurance and testing that shows those systems can be trusted.\n\nAs a Craft Lead, you will lead and develop a team of ML engineers working across our projects and products. You will be responsible for their development, their performance and the quality of their craft, and for how the team works. You will spend roughly 70% of your time on hands-on ML engineering and 30% leading the team.\n\nYou will need real ML expertise of your own and still enjoy doing the work, but you will not be expected to match the depth of our principal engineers-your focus is the team and the craft. You will work closely with them and with our technical and delivery leads, and report to the Head of ML.\n\nNo prior defence experience is required. We’re interested in people who’ve built and deployed AI systems in demanding environments and are passionate about delivering tangible value to end users, whatever the sector.\n\nWhile this role offers hybrid working options, it requires a minimum of 3 days per week on-site at our Bristol HQ, with occasional travel to customer sites.\nCandidates must be eligible for Developed Vetting (DV) clearance.\n\n More information about security clearance is available here:\nhttps://www.gov.uk/government/publications/united-kingdom-security-vetting-clearance-levels\n\nSalary\n For senior roles, compensation is tailored to the scope of the role and the specific experience a candidate brings. Because that can vary significantly, we do not always publish a fixed salary band. We will, however, discuss compensation openly at the first stage of the process and can share an indicative range before either side invests significant time.\nKey areas of responsibility\nLead and develop your team: line manage your engineers, set clear objectives, support each person’s progression, and be accountable for how the team performs. \nSet what good looks like: work with technical and delivery leads to define and uphold standards for ML engineering, from code quality and evaluation to documentation. \nBuild how we work: develop the ways of working, processes and systems the team relies on-how we plan, review, share knowledge and ship-and improve them as we grow. \nGrow the craft: raise the team’s skills through mentoring, reviews and knowledge sharing, and bring in new practices where they help. \nResource and hire: put the right people on the right projects with engineering and business line leadership, and lead hiring for the ML team as it grows. \nStay hands-on: spend around 70% of your time on project work as an ML engineer, so your leadership is grounded in what the team is actually doing. \nKey skills, experience and behaviours\nEssential:\nBuilder mindset: bias to action, ownership over outcomes, and comfort working through ambiguity. \nPeople leadership: experience line managing and developing engineers, with a track record of people who got better, took on more, or progressed because of your support. \nGrowing and resourcing teams: experience hiring during a period of growth, and balancing people across several concurrent projects or customers. \nML engineering: current, hands-on experience building, training, evaluating or deploying ML systems for real-world use, with strong Python and good software engineering habits. \nGood engineering practice: a clear view of what good ML and software engineering looks like-performance, architecture, testing, code review, reproducibility, evaluation-and how to build it into a team. \nInterpersonal skills: strong communicator who can mentor, influence, handle difficult conversations well, and bridge technical and non-technical audiences. \nEducation: MSc or equivalent experience required. \nDesirable:\nBreadth across ML: experience with LLMs and agentic systems, edge deployment or large-scale training, enough to support engineers working in those areas. \nMLOps: reproducible pipelines, model versioning, CI/CD, observability, and automated evaluation. \nBeneficial knowledge:\nWays of working: Agile delivery and engineering career frameworks. \nGeneral tooling and platforms: Databricks, AWS, GCP, GitHub, Docker/Kubernetes, MLflow, Jira. \n Edge deployments: Nvidia Jetson (e.g. Jetson Thor), Raspberry Pi, or other embedded accelerators.\nWorking at Rowden\nWe are committed to building a flexible, inclusive, and enabling company. Our aim is to create a diverse team of talented people with unique skills, experience, and backgrounds, so please apply and come as you are!\n\nWe also recognise the importance of flexible working and support this wherever we can. We typically operate a flexible, hybrid-working model, with an average 3 days in the office each week (dependent on the role). We welcome the opportunity to discuss flexibility, part-time working requirements and/or workplace adjustments with all our applicants.\n\nRowden is a Disability Confident Committed company, and we actively encourage people with disabilities and health conditions to apply for our roles. Please let us know your requirements early on so that we can make sure you have everything you need up front to help make the recruitment process and experience as easy as possible.\n\nFinally, if you feel that you don’t meet all the criteria included above but have transferable skills and relevant experience, we’d still love to hear from you!","description_format":"text","description_chars":6347,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Flexible schedule","Hybrid work"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United Kingdom","iso":"GB","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["National Security","Engineering Services"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-04T17:26:07Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":90,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.903,"p_room":1,"age_days":3,"expected_fill_days":22,"reasons":["conf:3","velocity","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-11-07T05:47:08Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/rowden-technologies-ltd-lead-machine-learning-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/rowden-technologies-ltd-lead-machine-learning-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-07T21:41:47Z","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":35244,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-08T00:00:00Z"}},"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":685499},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=685499"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Frowden-technologies-ltd-lead-machine-learning-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%2Frowden-technologies-ltd-lead-machine-learning-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%2Frowden-technologies-ltd-lead-machine-learning-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/rowden-technologies-ltd-lead-machine-learning-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Frowden-technologies-ltd-lead-machine-learning-engineer"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3757495}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"rowdentech.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3757495},"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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