Field Engineer - Interceptors AI & Engineering London

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.

As a Field Engineer on the interceptor programme, you will help take AD-1 and AD-2 from development flight trials to qualified, mass-produced products. You'll work in a tight iteration loop with propulsion, GNC, seeker, avionics, software and AI engineers, as well as product managers and military end users. Ultimately, you will help assure the safety, reliability and effectiveness of Helsing's air defence products.

The day-to-day responsibilities include:

• Preparing and running trials of Air Defence products at test ranges, from pre-trial build-up and launcher/container integration through launch, recovery and post-trial analysis.
• Supporting build, checkout and pre-flight procedures.
• Installing and configuring software on ground stations, launchers and edge compute, using Helsing’s in-house deployment tools.
• Writing and improving trial plans, range safety documentation, hazard analyses, firing SOPs and checklists.
• Defining and securing what we need for an efficient, scalable trials operation.
• Feeding field learnings back into design and production.
• Advising on operator training, launcher/container handling procedures and in-service support for military customers.
• Travelling regularly to test ranges and customer sites in the UK, Germany, and across Europe and beyond (sometimes at short notice and for multi-day trial campaigns).

You should apply if you:

• Have strong technical aptitude and natural curiosity. You can understand complex hardware and software systems (airframe, propulsion, guidance, sensors, datalinks, C2) at a systems level.
• Have excellent written and verbal communication skills. You can write clear, rigorous trial and safety documentation and talk fluently about technical concepts with engineers, range staff, military users and non-engineers.
• Take safety seriously and work with discipline in high-hazard environments, following procedures exactly while still challenging them when they can be improved.
• Are a natural problem solver. You can independently own critical workstreams, spot problems early and take the initiative to fix them, often under time pressure on a trials day.
• Are happy with hands-on, physical fieldwork: packing, transporting, setting up and operating equipment outdoors in all weather.
• Are passionate about protecting liberal democratic values by contributing to the defence and security sector.

Nice to Have:

• Experience with missile, rocket, fast-jet UAV trials, such as range operations, flight test engineering, or test and evaluation (T&E) in industry or the armed forces.
• Hands-on experience with small gas-turbine/turbojet engines or solid rocket motors.
• Background in air defence, GBAD, C-UAS or radar systems, whether operational (e.g. air defence or artillery units) or as an engineer.
• Familiarity with telemetry, flight test instrumentation, HIL testing or trials data analysis.
• Experience with range safety cases, airspace coordination, or submissions to aviation/range authorities.
• Experience training end users on complex hardware and/or software products, or providing in-service support.
• Current or eligibility for national security clearance.

Join Helsing and work with world-leading experts in their fields. Helsing’s work is important. You’ll be directly contributing to the protection of democratic countries while balancing both ethical and geopolitical concerns. The work is unique. We operate in a domain that has highly unusual technical requirements and constraints, and where robustness, safety, and ethical considerations are vital. You will face unique Engineering and AI challenges that make a meaningful impact in the world.

Our work frequently takes us right up to the state of the art in technical innovation, be it reinforcement learning, distributed systems, generative AI, or deployment infrastructure. The defence industry is entering the most exciting phase of the technological development curve. Advances in our field of world are not incremental: Helsing is part of, and often leading, historic leaps forward.

In our domain, success is a matter of order-of-magnitude improvements and novel capabilities. This means we take bets, aim high, and focus on big opportunities. Despite being a relatively young company, Helsing has already been selected for multiple significant government contracts.

We actively encourage healthy, proactive, and diverse debate internally about what we do and how we choose to do it. Teams and individual engineers are trusted (and encouraged) to practise responsible autonomy and critical thinking, and to focus on outcomes, not conformity. At Helsing you will have a say in how we (and you!) work, the opportunity to engage on what does and doesn’t work, and to take ownership of aspects of our culture that you care deeply about.

What we offer:

• Competitive salary and VSOP options.
• Relocation support: up to €2,500 and 4 weeks temporary accommodation.
• Learning: €500/£450 yearly allowance.
• Health & wellness: gym membership and mental health support (Nilo.health).
• Social: regular company events and monthly social allowances.
• Enhanced parental leave: 22 weeks fully paid for primary caregivers & 6 weeks for secondary caregivers.
• Family support: 5 days of paid family emergency leave, 100% remote work option during pregnancy and phased return to work.
• A hands-on onboarding program (affectionately labelled “Infraduction”), in which you will be building tooling and applications to be used across the company.

These are the core benefits across all locations; there may be additional benefits in certain locations. 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.