Agentic RL Engineer in London

Agentic RL Engineer in London

London Full-Time 66150 - 80850 £ / year (est.) On-site
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At a Glance

  • Tasks: Lead the development of cutting-edge AI systems and optimise model serving.
  • Company: Join Recurvia, a pioneering reinforcement learning lab backed by top investors.
  • Benefits: Competitive salary, equity participation, and substantial research resources.
  • Other info: Be part of a dynamic team shaping innovative AI solutions.
  • Why this job: Make a real impact on the future of AI technology and research.
  • Qualifications: MSc or PhD in relevant fields with strong RL theory knowledge.

The predicted salary is between 66150 - 80850 £ per year.

About Recurvia

Recurvia is a frontier reinforcement learning lab building AI systems that improve other AI systems.

Our mission is to accelerate machine learning development using machine learning itself.

Our work spans fundamental reinforcement learning research, large-scale experimentation, and product development.

  • Our current products are the first applications of this research programme:
  • Paramorph — a foundation model, trained with multi-agent reinforcement learning, that controls and optimises the training of other AI models.
  • Metrana — an AI-powered observability platform for large-scale reinforcement learning and foundation model training workloads.

We are backed by Amadeus Capital Partners, the European Innovation Council and Amazon Web Services.

Following the award of a €2.5 million EIC Accelerator grant, we are expanding the team to accelerate development and commercialisation of our technology platform.

About the Role

We are looking for a Agentic RL Engineer to lead the agentic core of Metrana and contribute to a new stealth project in inference-time optimisation.

You will own the Metrana agent end to end: designing the agent harness, building evaluation frameworks, running RL-based post-training, and developing autonomous research capabilities that let the system investigate and act on training workloads with minimal supervision.

Alongside this, you will help shape an early-stage project applying test-time and inference-time scaling techniques to optimise model serving.

We are looking for someone who has made the transition from classic reinforcement learning research to post-training and agentic RL — someone grounded in RL theory who now spends their time on GRPO runs, tool-use agents, evals and harness design rather than gridworlds and game environments.

The role sits closer to the engineering end of the research–engineering spectrum than our Senior RL Research Engineer position, but still demands solid reinforcement learning knowledge and research judgement.

You will work closely with research scientists and engineers across the company, shaping both the scientific direction of our agentic work and the systems built from it.

This is an opportunity to join a deep reinforcement learning lab at an early stage and define how production agents are built, evaluated and improved.

Key Responsibilities

  • Design and build the Metrana agent harness, including tool integration via MCP, context and memory management, and orchestration of multi-agent workflows.
  • Develop rigorous evaluation frameworks and agent evaluation methodologies covering capability, reliability and long-horizon task performance.
  • Run RL-based post-training using GRPO, RLVR and related techniques, including reward design and synthetic data generation for agentic tasks.
  • Build autonomous research agents that automate experimentation, analysis and hypothesis generation across our research programme.
  • Contribute to a stealth project on inference-time optimisation, applying test-time scaling and related techniques to model serving.
  • Develop tool-use, code and computer-use agent capabilities with robust long-horizon planning.
  • Collaborate with engineers across the company to ship agentic systems into production environments.
  • Required Skills & Experience
  • MSc, Ph D or equivalent industry experience in computer science, machine learning, AI or a related discipline.
  • Solid grounding in reinforcement learning theory, with demonstrable experience applying it to post-training of large language models.
  • Hands-on experience with GRPO, RLVR, RLHF or related post-training methods.
  • Experience designing and building agent harnesses, including tool use, MCP or similar protocols, and evaluation loops.
  • Experience building evals — designing tasks, metrics and infrastructure to measure agent capability and reliability.
  • Excellent Python skills and a track record of building production-quality software.
  • Strong experience with Py Torch and the modern machine learning ecosystem.
  • Ability to drive research and engineering projects independently, from concept through evaluation.

Desirable Skills & Experience

  • Experience building autonomous research agents or research automation pipelines.
  • Experience with multi-agent systems, code agents, computer-use agents or other long-horizon tool-use systems.
  • Experience with test-time and inference-time scaling techniques, or inference optimisation more broadly.
  • Experience with synthetic data generation for agent training and evaluation.
  • Interest in self-improving agent architectures and recursive approaches to ML development.
  • Publications at leading machine learning conferences or journals.
  • Contributions to open-source agent frameworks, RL libraries or related projects.
  • Experience in a research-driven environment such as a frontier AI lab, advanced AI startup or leading academic group.

What We Offer

  • Competitive Compensation
  • Competitive salary and meaningful equity participation.
  • Frontier AI Research
  • Work on novel agentic and reinforcement learning technologies with the potential to influence how future AI systems are trained, evaluated and deployed.
  • Substantial compute resources and the freedom to pursue ambitious experimental research.
  • Research Impact
  • Support for publication at leading venues such as Neur IPS, ICML and ICLR, where appropriate.
  • Opportunities to contribute to patents, open-source projects and novel technological advances.
  • Join at a Pivotal Stage
  • Backed by Amadeus Capital Partners, the European Innovation Council and AWS.
  • Join early enough to shape both the technology and the company itself.
  • #J-18808-Ljbffr

Agentic RL Engineer in London employer: Recurvia

Recurvia is an exceptional employer for those passionate about advancing AI technology, offering a unique opportunity to work at the forefront of reinforcement learning research. With competitive compensation, meaningful equity participation, and substantial compute resources, employees are empowered to pursue ambitious experimental research while contributing to impactful publications and patents. The collaborative work culture fosters innovation and growth, making it an ideal environment for talented individuals looking to shape the future of AI systems.

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Contact Details:

Recurvia Recruitment Team

StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫

We think this is how you could land Agentic RL Engineer in London

✨Join Local Tech Meetups

Get out there and mingle with fellow developers by joining local tech meetups. It’s a fantastic way to meet people who might be working at Recurvia or know someone who does. Plus, you can pick up some trendy tech skills and trends while you're at it!

✨Contribute to Open Source Projects

Show off your coding chops by jumping into open-source projects. Not only does this give you practical experience, but it also gets you noticed in the dev community. You'll create a killer portfolio that speaks volumes about your skills to Recurvia.

✨Tap into Online Developer Communities

Don’t underestimate the power of online developer communities like GitHub, Stack Overflow, and even Reddit. Participate in discussions, share your projects, and build your visibility. We can often find opportunities through these channels that can lead to a full-time gig at companies like Recurvia.

✨Explore Job Boards Specifically for Tech Roles

Keep your eyes peeled on job boards that focus on tech roles. Sites like TechCareers or Stack Overflow Jobs can often have listings for companies like Recurvia that might not show up on broader job sites. Make it a habit to check these regularly, and don’t hesitate to apply directly through our website!

We think you need these skills to ace Agentic RL Engineer in London

Reinforcement Learning Theory
Post-Training Techniques
GRPO
RLVR
RLHF
Agent Harness Design
Tool Integration

Some tips for your application 🫡

Show off your coding skills:When applying for a software engineering role, it's super important to showcase your coding skills. Make sure your CV includes your tech stack, any relevant programming languages you’re comfortable with, and examples of projects you've worked on. If you have a GitHub profile, link it up! We love to see code in action.

Tailor your portfolio:For a full-time role, we’d expect to see some solid examples of your work in your portfolio. Make sure to include at least two or three projects that highlight your problem-solving skills and your ability to work with different technologies. Focus on the projects that are most relevant to the position at Recurvia.

Craft a killer cover letter:Your cover letter is your chance to stand out—make it personal! Explain why you want to work at Recurvia and how your skills align with the role. Show us your passion for software development. We dig enthusiastic candidates who understand the value of collaboration and continuous learning!

Be clear and concise:When it comes to writing your CV and cover letter, clarity is key. Avoid jargon that could confuse us and stick to simple, direct language. Highlight your achievements with quantifiable results where possible, and keep everything easy to read. A well-organised application goes a long way!

How to prepare for a job interview at Recurvia

✨Brush Up on Your Coding Skills

For a full-time software engineering role, it's crucial that we stay sharp with our coding abilities. Expect technical questions that might involve solving problems on the spot or discussing algorithms. Practise on platforms like LeetCode or HackerRank to get comfortable with the types of questions that often come up.

✨Know Your Tools and Frameworks

Make sure we’re well-acquainted with the tools and technologies listed in the job description. Familiarise ourselves with any specific frameworks or programming languages mentioned. If Recurvia uses React or Node.js, for instance, be ready to discuss how we’ve used them in previous projects or coursework.

✨Showcase Your Projects

Bring along a portfolio that highlights our best work. This could be code samples, GitHub repositories, or any side projects we’ve built. Make sure we can talk through our thought process for each project, especially the challenges we faced and how we solved them—this shows our problem-solving skills in action.

✨Prepare for Behavioural Questions

While technical skills are key, full-time positions also require cultural fit. Be ready to discuss our previous experiences and how we handle teamwork, conflict, and deadlines. Brush up on the STAR method—Situation, Task, Action, Result—to clearly articulate our past experiences when discussing how we've contributed to a team.