Staff Machine Learning Software Engineer, Research in London

About us PhysicsX is a deep-tech company with roots in numerical physics and Formula One, dedicated to accelerating hardware innovation at the speed of software. We are building an AI-driven simulation software stack for engineering and manufacturing across advanced industries. By enabling high-fidelity, multi-physics simulation through AI inference across the entire engineering lifecycle, PhysicsX unlocks new levels of optimization and automation in design, manufacturing, and operations — empowering engineers to push the boundaries of possibility. Our customers include leading innovators in Aerospace & Defense, Materials, Energy, Semiconductors, and Automotive.

What you will do:

• Shape Research group strategy and culture in a significant way, especially in domains of expertise.
• Be opinionated and formulate strategy on engineering topics relevant to our Research priorities, especially on: scaled engineering, securing compute, infrastructure stack.
• Define necessary profiles to execute this strategy.
• Promote effective working patterns and proactively flag issues with team dynamics to foster a productive environment.
• Nurture younger colleagues to grow their skillset and guide their professional development.
• Own Research work-streams at a high-level to deliver outcomes.
• Align priorities with problem stakeholders, internal and external.
• Set the technical direction for the stream and apply judgement and taste to drive progress.
• Plan roadmaps with clear milestones for key decisions and outcomes.
• Organise and guide the more junior members of the team to effectively execute and deliver against this roadmap.
• Communicate purpose and key outcomes to raise awareness across the company and create opportunities for use and deployment.

The below activities in particular:

• Work closely with our research scientists and simulation engineers to build and deliver models that address real-world physics and engineering problems.
• Design, build and optimise machine learning models with a focus on scalability and efficiency in our application domain.
• Transform prototype model implementations to robust and optimised implementations.
• Implement distributed training architectures (e.g., data parallelism, parameter server, etc.) for multi-node/multi-GPU training and explore federated learning capacity using cloud (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP) and on-premise services.
• Work with research scientists to design, build and scale foundation models for science and engineering; helping to scale and optimise model training to large data and multi-GPU cloud compute.
• Identify the best libraries, frameworks and tools for our modelling efforts to set us up for success.
• Discuss the results and implications of your work with colleagues and customers, especially how these results can address real-world problems.
• Work at the intersection of data science and software engineering to translate the results of our Research into re-usable libraries, tooling and products.
• Foster a nurturing environment for colleagues with less experience in ML / Engineering for them to grow and you to mentor.

What you bring to the table:

• Enthusiasm about developing machine learning solutions, especially deep learning and/or probabilistic methods, and associated supporting software solutions for science and engineering.
• Ability to work autonomously and scope and effectively deliver projects across a variety of domains.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to analyse issues, identify causes, and recommend solutions quickly.
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills — with teams and customers alike.
• MSc or PhD in computer science, machine learning, applied statistics, mathematics, physics, engineering, software engineering, or a related field, with a record of experience in any of the following: scientific computing; high-performance computing (CPU / GPU clusters); parallelised / distributed training for large / foundation models.
• 4 years of experience in a data-driven role in a professional industry setting, where you have been instrumental in most of the below:
• scaling and optimising ML models, training and serving foundation models at scale (federated learning a bonus);
• employing distributed computing frameworks (e.g., Spark, Dask) and high-performance computing frameworks (MPI, OpenMP, CUDA, Triton);
• employing cloud computing (on hyper-scaler platforms, e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP);
• building machine learning models and pipelines in Python, using common libraries and frameworks (e.g., NumPy, SciPy, Pandas, PyTorch, JAX), especially including deep learning applications;
• building or using C/C++ for computer vision, geometry processing, or scientific computing;
• following and promoting software engineering concepts and best practices (e.g., versioning, testing, CI/CD, API design, MLOps);
• container-izing and orchestrating compute tasks (Docker, Kubernetes, Slurm);
• writing pipelines and experiment environments, including running experiments in pipelines in a systematic way.

What we offer:

• Build what actually matters - Help shape an AI-native engineering company at a formative stage, tackling problems that genuinely matter for industry and society.
• Learn alongside exceptional people - Work with a high-caliber, collaborative team of engineers, scientists, and operators who care deeply about doing great work, and about helping each other get better.
• Influence over hierarchy - We operate with a flat structure: good ideas win - wherever they come from.
• Sustainable pace, long-term ambition - Building meaningful technology is a marathon, not a sprint.
• Equity options - share meaningfully in the company you’re helping to build.
• 10% employer pension contribution - because investing in future matters.
• Free office lunches - to keep you energised and focused.
• Enhanced parental leave - 3 months full pay paternity and 6 months full pay maternity leave, to provide extra flexibility during the moments that matter most.
• YellowNest nursery scheme - to help working parents manage childcare costs.
• 25 days of Annual Leave (+ Public Holidays) - because taking time to rest matters.
• Private medical insurance - 100% employee cover, giving you complete peace of mind.
• Wellhub Subscription - gain access to thousands of gyms, classes and wellness apps, supporting both physical and mental wellbeing.
• Eye tests - because good work depends on good health.
• Personal development - dedicated support for learning, development, and leveling up over time.
• Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) - confidential wellbeing support, available whenever you need it.
• Bike2Work scheme and Season ticket loan - to make getting to work easier and greener.
• Octopus EV salary sacrifice - for a simpler, more sustainable way to drive electric.

We value diversity and are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of sex, race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, disability, age, sexual orientation or gender identity. We strongly encourage individuals from groups traditionally underrepresented in tech to apply.