Research Engineer - Lab Brains & Scientific Workflows (12 months FTC) in London

The UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI) is a globally leading multidisciplinary research institute with a community of c. 1000 researchers investigating the spectrum of neurodegenerative disorders causing dementia, driving a step change in our understanding of neurodegeneration, and accelerating the discovery, development and delivery of interventions that will help diagnose, treat, and ultimately prevent dementia.

At UK DRI, important scientific knowledge lives in more places than published papers. It is in the discussion that changed an experiment, the protocol refined over months, the analysis someone can no longer reproduce, and the context a departing researcher takes with them. We want to make that knowledge useful to the people discovering new ways to diagnose and treat dementia. Help build a research institute that remembers what it has learned and puts that knowledge to work.

You will build Lab Brains: agents and connected tools that help laboratories understand their work, recover its history and follow through on what needs to happen next. You will work directly with researchers, technicians and lab managers, turning their recurring problems into software they choose to use. Imagine asking why a protocol changed, receiving the relevant experimental record and meeting decision, and preparing the right follow-up in the lab's project system. Or helping a new researcher understand what has already been tried, which result remains uncertain and who can help. You will make workflows like these dependable, inspectable and easy to correct. This is a hands-on technical leadership role with room to shape the product and influence the Institute’s use of AI.

You will be a founding member of the Institute-wide AI initiative, working as a peer with an engineer focused on scientific knowledge and field building.

What you'll build:

• Useful lab workflows connecting meeting notes, approved Slack conversations, Linear projects and Labstep experimental records, with links to the relevant code, data and documents. Start with a small agreed pilot and extend what works.
• Agents and tools that recover experimental history, preserve decisions and negative or inconclusive results, identify missing context and propose follow-up that users can inspect and approve.
• Reusable integrations that handle changing records, permissions, retries and failures, and keep the authoritative systems connected without creating extra manual record-keeping.
• Interfaces and review controls that help people see where an answer came from, correct it and choose what may be shared beyond their lab.
• A tested route for distributing useful tools across participating labs, with documentation, dependable releases and clear ownership for support.

You will compare existing agents, scientific software and commercial tools on our actual workflows and develop a strategy for adoption across the Institute where they fit and leading development where a clear need remains. You will champion use of these agents to senior management, explaining the benefits they bring to the Institute and proactively revisit them as the ecosystem changes.

How you will work:

• Spend time with the people doing the science, then ship and improve small working products.
• Evaluate task completion, source accuracy, net time saved, recurring use, running costs and failure modes.
• Keep the mistakes and rejected suggestions visible so the team learns from them.
• Treat reproducibility as part of the product: preserve the versions, methods, code and evidence needed to inspect a result or repeat an analysis.
• Build permissions, human approval and correction into the workflow. Researchers should gain useful memory and control over their work.
• With the Scientific Knowledge & Field Building engineer, connect selected, authorised lab knowledge to wider scientific questions and return useful requests or opportunities to the lab.
• Both engineers share responsibility for an end-to-end workflow that improves real work.

What you bring:

• Strong programming ability and evidence of shipping software that other people use, with the ability to learn the languages and tools needed by the codebase.
• Sound software engineering practice: Git with GitHub or equivalent, code review, automated testing, continuous integration, documentation, packaging, dependency management and maintainable releases.
• Practical experience building LLM applications or comparable intelligent automation, including tool/API integration, evaluation and debugging.
• Experience connecting systems and handling authentication, data access, changing records and operational failures.
• Product judgement: you can discover a useful problem with users, choose a manageable first version and improve it from feedback.
• A commitment to reproducible science and collaborative software development, demonstrated through examples of work others can inspect, run or improve.
• Enthusiasm and ability to influence how an organisation can drive change through technology adoption.
• The ability to work autonomously and lead: set priorities, make and justify technical and strategic decisions, bring others with you and take ownership of outcomes.

Experience with research software, laboratory workflows, scientific computing, developer tools, open-source packages, electronic lab notebooks or task systems would be valuable. You do not need prior experience with every named platform. We welcome evidence from industry, startups, academia, open source and independent projects; no particular degree or PhD is required where equivalent capability can be demonstrated.

Early priorities:

• First month: understand the existing prototypes and pilot labs; agree one workflow and how to evaluate it; demonstrate a working route from source context to a useful answer or proposed action.
• By three months: put that workflow into regular use with an agreed, consenting pilot group, with onboarding, source links, correction, access controls and a record of failures and running costs.
• By six months: assess sustained user value against the previous process and transfer the pattern to another lab where justified, with reproducible releases and a clear account of what needs to change.
• By twelve months: deliver a maintained service for an agreed cohort where the pilot warrants it, or a justified stop/redesign decision with reusable outputs. Advise senior management what to extend, change or stop and who will own continuing services.

What we offer:

We believe in rewarding our team with more than just a competitive base salary an opportunity to make a difference. Here’s what you can look forward to:

• Generous holiday allowance: 27 days of annual leave (plus UK Bank Holidays) to recharge and explore.
• Business closure days: Enjoy up to 6 additional days off each year.
• Private medical cover: Single medical insurance to support your health and peace of mind.
• Group Life Assurance: Protection for your loved ones with coverage up to 4x your base salary.
• Income Protection & Critical Illness Cover: Financial security when you need it most.
• Employee Assistance Programme: Confidential support for your mental and emotional wellbeing.
• Enhanced maternity, paternity, neonatal and adoption pay: Because family matters.
• Season Ticket Loan: Save on your commute with an interest-free loan.
• Generous pension scheme: Contribute 6.1% as an employee, with an employer contribution of 15.9% helping you build a secure future.
• Plus Voluntary benefits programme: Access a wide range of discounts and perks tailored to your lifestyle.
• Hybrid working: We embrace a hybrid working model, with the majority of your time spent in our collaborative modern office environment in London. We offer the flexibility to work remotely for up to 1-2 days per week.

To apply, please submit your CV and covering letter detailing why you wish to join the UK DRI, your availability, and your experience for this role. No agencies please. We are unable to provide sponsorship.

UK DRI is committed to equal opportunities. The UK DRI embraces diversity, inclusion and accessibility for all of our people. We are committed to building a diverse organisation that represents the communities we serve and ensuring inclusion in everything we do. This means ensuring our recruitment processes are barrier-free and as inclusive as possible to everyone. We will make adjustments for people who have a disability or long-term condition.