ML Systems Engineer

Machine Learning Engineer, AI Startup (Edinburgh, hybrid, UK-wide considered)

An early-stage AI infrastructure company building a persistent, high-speed knowledge layer for agentic AI, letting thousands of AI agents query a shared knowledge base concurrently. Spinning out of a leading UK university, currently hardware-led and building out its software capability from scratch.

The role: Own the software-side modelling and benchmarking that proves the system works, working closely with the CTO.

What you’ll do:

• Own the software model (“digital twin”) used to evaluate system behaviour ahead of dedicated hardware

• Build agentic AI and GraphRAG workloads showing measurable system-level improvements

• Build and maintain a benchmark suite (latency, GPU utilisation, token reduction, throughput, cost per query)

• Design experiments isolating the impact of the semantic memory layer on inference performance

• Develop enterprise knowledge graph datasets and evaluation methodologies

• Work with hardware/systems teams to keep software models aligned with hardware capability

• Generate evidence to support pilots, fundraising, and technical validation

What we’re looking for:

• Commercial experience in AI systems, retrieval, or AI infrastructure, having shipped production software

• Hands-on experience with agentic pipelines, LLM fine-tuning, RAG/GraphRAG, or knowledge graphs

• Strong Python, comfortable across ML, distributed systems, and performance engineering

• Track record building benchmarks/eval frameworks with real rigour

• Systems thinker, high agency, comfortable with ambiguity

• Strong communicator able to translate technical results into clear evidence