AI Research Lead

Company Description

ALTEN is a global engineering and technology consultancy operating across over 35 countries worldwide. We partner with industry leaders across sectors including Aeronautics, Aerospace, Defence, Naval, Automotive, Energy, Rail, IT and many more to deliver innovative engineering solutions that drive technological advancement & support sustainable transformation.

Our teams of passionate and agile engineers work on cutting-edge projects that shape the future of technology and sustainability. At ALTEN, we empower talented engineers to innovate, solve complex challenges, and deliver impactful solutions that build tomorrow’s world—today.

Join us and start building tomorrow’s world today!

Job Description

We are seeking an experienced AI Research Lead to drive the research, development, and deployment of next-generation AI solutions, with a particular focus on Large Language Models (LLMs), Vision Language Models (VLMs), Computer Vision, and Multimodal AI systems.

This role is ideal for a highly technical professional who can bridge cutting-edge research and production engineering, translating innovative concepts into scalable, real-world solutions. You will lead AI initiatives, design experimentation frameworks, and provide technical leadership across multimodal AI projects.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead research and development activities across LLM, VLM, and multimodal AI domains.
• Design, implement, and evaluate AI models incorporating text, image, and multimodal reasoning capabilities.
• Develop and optimise Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures.
• Drive experimentation, model evaluation, benchmarking, and validation activities.
• Fine-tune and adapt foundation models for business-specific use cases.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to transition research outputs into production-ready systems.
• Define AI system architectures leveraging cloud-native and distributed computing environments.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to AI engineers and researchers.
• Stay current with the latest academic and industry advancements in AI and machine learning.

Qualifications

Required Skills:

AI & Multimodal Systems

• Expertise with Large Language Models (LLMs) such as GPT, Llama, Mistral, or equivalent.
• Experience with Vision Language Models (VLMs) including CLIP, BLIP, and related multimodal architectures.
• Strong understanding of prompt engineering, fine-tuning, and model optimisation.
• Experience designing and implementing RAG pipelines.
• Deep knowledge of multimodal AI, vision-language fusion, and reasoning systems.
• Experience evaluating model performance, robustness, and safety.

Software Engineering

• Advanced Python development skills.
• Experience building scalable AI services and APIs.
• Strong backend development and integration experience.
• Knowledge of software engineering best practices and MLOps workflows.

Cloud & Infrastructure

• Experience with Microsoft Azure (preferred), AWS, or Google Cloud Platform.
• Containerisation using Docker.
• Orchestration using Kubernetes and/or Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).
• Experience designing microservices-based and distributed architectures.

Research & Innovation Capabilities

• Expertise in experiment design and scientific evaluation methodologies.
• Ability to rapidly prototype, test, and validate AI concepts.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Proven ability to transform research findings into production-grade solutions.
• Passion for innovation and emerging AI technologies.

Required Qualifications:

• A Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Engineering, or equivalent military experience or a degree in
• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Robotics
• Electrical & Electronic Engineering
• Related STEM discipline

Desirable Skills:

• Generative AI product development.
• Computer Vision and image understanding systems.
• AI agent frameworks and autonomous workflows.
• Knowledge graphs and semantic retrieval systems.
• MLOps and model deployment pipelines.
• Team leadership or technical management experience.

Additional Information

Why join us?

We bring together entrepreneurial, tech-driven people to deliver innovative solutions for leading companies.

At ALTEN, you’ll work on exciting projects, supported by ongoing learning, mentoring, and clear career development tailored to your goals.