Senior Machine Learning Engineer in London

The company is a rapidly growing startup developing solutions that utilise Virtual Agents to handle manual customer and marketplace operations tasks. Virtual agents blend deterministic Python code, LLM reasoning and agentic AI capabilities to undertake this work, along with a fallback to human experts. Our unique approach combines the strengths of human expertise (high accuracy and nuanced decision-making) with the advantages of AI automation (speed and cost efficiency). This cutting-edge technology helps businesses solve real-world challenges in trust & safety, and beyond, without the need for complex technical integration. We believe in an online world free from harm, where we can trust AI to make safe and fair decisions.

We have raised about $25M in VC funding from top-tier funds, including Creandum and Plural, and operate at significant scale - analysing millions of daily images and videos from 10+ Enterprise customers. But we are just at the beginning of our journey - and we are very excited about our plans for growth over the coming year and beyond.

The role involves building and delivering innovative AI products to our customers. Your software expertise and machine learning knowledge will help transform our customers' manual processes into AI automated solutions. Your mission will be to ensure our customers receive the most effective AI solutions for their specific needs, either by delivering solutions to them or creating capabilities that support these activities. You will apply your technical and analytical skills to understand customer challenges and collaborate with them to leverage our AI in the automation of their work. Initially, you will provide hands-on support for our machine learning models as they come to market but then will gradually develop self-service tools that empower customers to achieve value independently.

As part of this role, you will do some or all of:

• Collaborate with customers to thoroughly understand their workflows, then design and build Virtual Agents that automate their processes.
• Contribute to the development of our Virtual Agent development platform that scales with our product strategy.
• Ensure our AI services maintain high standards of reliability, observability, availability, and performance.
• Participate in our machine learning community to influence how we implement machine learning and computer vision technologies, shaping Unitary's future.
• Take ownership of customer outcomes with the autonomy to make decisions that surprise and delight our customers.
• Contribute full-stack development including software engineering, DevOps, and MLOps, along with light task and project management to ensure your AI solutions deliver maximum value.

We are looking for someone who is as excited about Unitary's mission as we are, who wants to have a large impact at an early-stage startup, and be a key part of defining Unitary's future as one of our early employees. We need versatile people who are happy to get stuck into whatever needs doing, and are ready to learn and grow with the company.

For this particular role, we need a proactive Machine Learning Engineer who is comfortable engaging with customers and technical internal stakeholders and exploring and presenting new ideas. Strong communication skills are essential, as you'll lead technical deliveries and bring others along on the journey. You embrace a product mindset in everything you do and should demonstrate a genuine curiosity for solving current and future customer challenges.

We would love to hear from you if you:

• Have strong Python and Machine Learning Engineering skills, with experience using and applying AI to solve customer problems.
• Can (or want to learn to) develop agentic AI systems that can automate human processes.
• Have an understanding of (or want to learn) how software is deployed through Kubernetes, and with the capability to deploy some infrastructure elements independently.
• Can demonstrate problem solving and project management skills in order to analyse workflows and design automated solutions.
• Thrive in a collaborative environment where group output and team achievements weigh heavier than individual input.
• Can travel to our company-wide offsites three times per year.

It would be even better, but not essential, if you have:

• Experience working in a fully remote, international team.
• Previous startup experience.
• A background in building and operating agentic AI systems.
• Experience with MLOps practices and tools, and monitoring machine learning systems in production.
• Knowledge of CI/CD practices and tools such as GitLab CI, Argo CD.
• Proficiency with SQL and NoSQL databases.
• Worked with Kubernetes and infrastructure as code (IaC) tools such as Terraform.
• Experience with Large Language Models (LLMs) and a keen interest in staying current with the latest AI technology advancements.

This role will report to the VP of Engineering and can be placed anywhere within 3 hours of the UK time zone.

Unitary is a remote-first team of c. 20 people spread across Europe and North America who are fiercely passionate about making the internet a safer place, and deeply motivated to become a force for good. We have an ambition to create a company filled with happy, kind and collaborative people who achieve extraordinary things together. Our culture is built around the power of trust, transparency and self-leadership.

We are committed to creating a positive and inclusive culture built on genuine interest for each other's well-being. We offer progressive and market-leading benefits, including:

• Flexible hours and location.
• Competitive salary and equity package.
• Occupational pension.
• Generous paid parental leave.
• Generous paid sick leave.
• Annual budget for your professional development and growth.
• Annual budget for your individual health and wellness.
• Three team off-sites to London or other exciting destinations in Europe.