Specialist ML and MLOps teams where machine learning is the core capability, spanning research, prototyping, productionisation and deployment into real National Security environments.National Security
Location: Manchester or Cheltenham
Level: Mid-level through to Senior / Lead
Clearance: Active SC minimum | DV/eDV highly desirable
Working pattern: Hybrid working - Secure Site working required
There are plenty of roles where “AI” is somewhere in the job description.
This isn’t really one of those.
I’m working with specialist ML and MLOps teams where machine learning is the core capability, spanning research, prototyping, productionisation and deployment into real National Security environments.
You’ll be working with people who genuinely care about the discipline, keep close to the research, experiment with new approaches and still care about getting models into production properly.
What you could be working across
- Python
- PyTorch, TensorFlow or scikit-learn
- LLMs, RAG, agents and evaluation
- ML research and rapid prototyping
- MLOps and production ML pipelines
- Model deployment, monitoring and lifecycle tooling
- AWS, Docker and Linux
- CI/CD and software engineering best practice
The strongest candidates tend to sit somewhere between research and engineering.
You might be taking ideas from papers and applying them to real customer problems, building production ML systems, or working with Platform and Data Engineers to make sure models actually perform reliably outside a notebook.
Why it’s worth a look
The teams I’m supporting offer:
- Genuine ML/AI specialism rather than generic consultancy work
- Exposure across research through to production
- Strong technical peers
- Time and encouragement to keep learning
- Real-world impact rather than endless PoCs
- The chance to work across some of the most interesting secure AI problems in the UK
You don’t need every framework listed above.
Curiosity, strong Python fundamentals and a genuine interest in how ML systems work in the real world matter more than ticking every box.
Clearance
You’ll need active SC as a minimum, with willingness/eligibility to go through higher levels of clearance long-term.
If you’re already working in ML/AI and curious about what the specialist labs and engineering teams are doing differently, send me your profile and I’ll give you a straight view of where you might fit.
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