AI Engineer

About the job

The Artificial Intelligence Collaboration Centre (AICC) is a £16.3M investment by InvestNI and the Department for the Economy to support the uptake of AI in Northern Ireland's businesses. Delivered by Ulster University and Queen's University Belfast in Belfast and Derry/Londonderry, the AICC works with companies to develop solutions to real-world problems.

The successful candidate, based at Queen's University Belfast, will work on a range of applied AI projects co-developed with companies to address business needs, developing rapid proof-of concept solutions. They will also assist with the development and delivery of AI skills programs and will have opportunities to work with academic researchers to help translate their research into commercial application.

About the person

The successful candidate must have, and your application should clearly demonstrate that you meet the following:

Essential Criteria:

• 2:1 Honours Degree, or equivalent, in Computer Science, Electrical/Electronic Engineering, or related discipline, or equivalent industry experience.
• Practical experience of software design and development in a commercial R&D environment.
• Experience in producing high-quality outputs such as demonstrators, prototypes, technical reports, design specifications and project deliverables which have successfully passed formal quality review procedures within a relevant R&D environment.
• Experience of current Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning methodologies/tools e.g. agentic patterns, LLM orchestration, vision models etc.

Desirable Criteria:

• MEng, MSc or Ph.D. in a relevant area.
• Hands-on AWS/Azure/Cloud expertise.
• Experience with AI tools outside the frontier model space e.g. open-weight models, fine-tuning, Small Language Models, edge models, distillation or similar
• Experience of working in high technology start-ups.

To be successful at shortlisting stage, please ensure you clearly evidence in your application how you meet the essential and, where applicable, desirable criteria listed in the Candidate Information.

This post is available for two years. Fixed term contract posts are available for the stated period in the first instance but in particular circumstances may be renewed or made permanent subject to availability of funding.

What we offer

Beyond a competitive salary, the University offers an attractive benefits package including a holiday entitlement of up to 8.4 weeks a year, pension schemes and development opportunities. We support staff wellbeing with flexible working options, work-life balance initiatives and support for physical and mental health. You can find more detail on all of this and more at https://www.qub.ac.uk/directorates/HumanResources/pay-reward-and-benefits/.

Queen's University is committed to promoting equality of opportunity to all. We subscribe to Equality Charter Marks such as the Diversity Charter Mark NI and Athena Swan and have established staff networks such as iRise (Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic and International Staff Network) and PRISM (LGBTQ+) which help us progress equality. For further information on our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, please visit www.qub.ac.uk/diversity.

If you are an international applicant and don't already hold a visa that permits you to take up the role you are applying for, please use the information provided on our website to self-assess whether the University is likely to be able to support a visa application - http://go.qub.ac.uk/internationalstaffsupport.

Candidate Information