Deployed AI Engineer in 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.

Software only matters when it is actively being used and making a difference. As a Deployed AI Engineer, you will be at the heart of this – taking state-of-the-art software and integrating it into complex systems. You will be defining and executing against the end-to-end outcome and all steps on the way to delivering novel capabilities in some of the most challenging environments around.

In close collaboration with our product teams, you will discover and formalise customer requirements, identify bugs, and ship the latest features directly to our users. Technology demonstrations are our chance to shine – you will coordinate between customers, partners, and Helsing engineers to showcase Helsing's software and AI capabilities in simulations or with real systems.

Qualifications

• Have a degree in computer science, software engineering, electrical engineering, or other relevant fields.
• Have a broad understanding and creative use of computer systems; this is the Swiss army knife in Helsing's toolbox of world-class talent.
• Prefer asking questions over stipulating answers.
• Love figuring things out, digging deeper and deeper into unfamiliar systems until it finally clicks, and you understand how they work.
• Are not afraid of legacy systems and would rather make them work than give up and try to rewrite it all.
• Are comfortable with scripting languages such as Bash or Python and have experience with software engineering in C++, Java, Rust, or similar.
• Can navigate and configure Linux systems and have an understanding of network stacks and database systems.
• If applying for Germany – it is a requirement that you are able to speak business level or fluent German.

Nice to Have

• Experience with Rust and Python.
• Experience with container-based, cloud-native and edge application architectures.
• Experience with maintaining and operating production systems using Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, or similar.
• Experience with SQL, NoSQL, and streaming database systems.
• Experience with production ML systems.
• Bonus points: you have professional experience working in a defence context.

Benefits & Culture

Helsing's work is important. You will 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

• A focus on outcomes, not time-tracking.
• Competitive compensation and stock options.
• Relocation support.
• Social and education allowances.
• Regular company events and all-hands across Europe.
• A hands-on onboarding program (affectionately labelled "Infraduction"), in which you will be building tooling and applications to be used across the company.

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.