Reinforcement Learning Engineer

Are you passionate about building AI systems that learn, adapt, and make decisions autonomously in some of the most complex and dynamic environments in the world? Predictiva is looking for a Reinforcement Learning Engineer to join our Edinburgh team. You will design and train RL agents that trade global financial markets, take them from research through to production deployment, and work alongside a team of engineers, researchers, and financial experts who are building some of the most technically ambitious systems in the fintech space.

This role is for someone who combines serious RL expertise with strong software engineering skills. We are not looking for a pure researcher, nor a pure engineer. We want someone who can do both.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and train deep reinforcement learning agents for autonomous trading across equities, FX, commodities, and crypto markets.
• Take models from research and experimentation through to robust, production‑grade deployment.
• Build and maintain training pipelines, experiment tracking, and model evaluation frameworks.
• Work with complex financial time‑series data, including preparation, processing, and feature engineering.
• Collaborate closely with the software engineering and DevOps teams to ensure reliable model deployment and monitoring in production.
• Stay current with RL research and identify techniques that are applicable to real‑world trading problems.
• Present findings, model behaviour, and results clearly to both technical and non‑technical stakeholders.

About You

• MSc in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Computer Science, or a related field.
• Strong understanding of deep reinforcement learning algorithms, including policy gradient methods, actor‑critic architectures, and model‑based approaches.
• Strong Python programming skills and software engineering fundamentals.
• Experience using deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow.
• Experience handling complex datasets and time‑series data.
• Ability to conduct independent research and communicate findings clearly to the team.
• Experience translating research into production systems, not just experimental notebooks.
• PhD in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Computer Science, or a related field.
• Familiarity with multi‑agent reinforcement learning or game‑theoretic approaches.
• Experience with experiment tracking and model lifecycle tools such as Weights and Biases or MLflow.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and containerised deployments.
• Interest or prior experience in financial markets or fintech.

What We Offer

• Employee share options through our equity pool.
• 28 days paid annual leave plus UK bank holidays.
• Free unlimited personal access to our trading platforms.
• Access to powerful cloud‑based and local compute resources.
• Company laptop and technical tools.
• The opportunity to work on state‑of‑the‑art RL systems deployed in live financial markets.
• A collaborative environment of scientists, engineers, and financial innovators, with strong ties to leading academic research institutions.

Why Join Us

At Predictiva, reinforcement learning is not a research exercise. It is the core of what we ship. You will work in an environment where academic rigour and production engineering are both taken seriously, surrounded by people who care deeply about both. Edinburgh places you within one of Europe’s most active AI research communities, with direct access to academic expertise and a team that has built and deployed RL systems in live markets. If you want your work to matter beyond a paper or a demo, this is the place to do it.