AI Research Engineer – Robotics, Control, RL
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About Helsing
Helsing is a defence AI company. Our mission is to protect our democracies. We aim to achieve technological leadership, so that open societies can continue to make sovereign decisions and control their ethical standards.
As democracies, we believe we have a special responsibility to be thoughtful about the development and deployment of powerful technologies like AI. We take this responsibility seriously. We are an ambitious and committed team of engineers, AI specialists and customer‑facing programme managers. We are looking for mission‑driven people to join our European teams – and apply their skills to solve the most complex and impactful problems. We embrace an open and transparent culture that welcomes healthy debates on the use of technology in defence, its benefits, and its ethical implications.
The role
At Helsing we deliver AI‑based capabilities and the enabling foundation that allow machines to perceive and assist human decision‑making. You will have the unique opportunity to shape AI capabilities in one of the most challenging sectors, where high generalisation capabilities need to be paired with hardware constraints and robustness against adversarial attacks.
You will be a part of a team focused on advancing robotics through reinforcement learning, where you will design, train and deploy agents to be deployed in robots in complex environments.
Responsibilities
* You will contribute to our reinforcement learning stack by implementing, improving and extending the current state of the art in multi‑agent reinforcement learning.
* You will contribute to projects and will collaborate with people across several teams and backgrounds.
Qualifications
* Hold an MSc in machine learning with a speciality in either robotics, reinforcement learning, or automation and control.
* Have excellent communication skills and the ability to report and present research findings clearly and efficiently both internally and externally.
* Are passionate about keeping up to date with current research and enjoy reimplementing / extending papers on state of the art Deep Learning‑based approaches.
* Possess solid software engineering skills, writing clean and well‑structured code in Python and/or languages like Rust, Java, or modern C++, and experience deploying AI software to production including testing, QA, and monitoring.
Note: We operate at an intersection where women, as well as other minority groups, are systematically under‑represented. We encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet all the listed qualifications; ability and impact cannot be summarised in a few bullet points.
Nice to have
* PhD in robotics, reinforcement learning, or automation and control, or related fields and have authored publications in top‑tier journals and conferences (eg, NeurIPS, CoRL, ICLR, ICRA).
* Experience with deploying RL models into real‑world robotics platforms.
* Experience in design, physical modelling and control of complex and highly interactive robotic systems using state‑of‑the‑art tools and techniques.
* Experience deploying AI software to production including testing, quality assurance, and monitoring.
Benefits
* Focus on outcomes, not time‑tracking
* Competitive compensation and stock options
* Relocation support
* Social and education allowances
* Regular company events and all‑hands to bring together employees as one team across Europe
* A hands‑on onboarding program (affectionately labelled “AI‑duction”), in which you will be familiarising yourself with our tools and ML pipelines used across the company. This is your opportunity to learn our tech stack, explore the company, and learn how we get things done - all whilst working with other AI and engineering teams from day one.
EEO Statement
Helsing is an equal opportunities employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability or gender identity. Please do not submit personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, data concerning your health, or data concerning your sexual orientation.
Helsing's Candidate Privacy and Confidentiality Regime can be found here.
Seniority level
Entry level
Employment type
Full‑time
Job function
Engineering and Information Technology
Location
London, England, United Kingdom
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