AI Engineer

The Opportunity

Join OpenWorks Engineering as our new AI Engineer and help shape the future of autonomous, intelligent systems within a rapidly scaling company driven by innovation. As part of the Intelligence and Autonomy team, you’ll work at the forefront of AI and computer vision, turning bold ideas into real-world capability on production hardware. This is an opportunity to drive meaningful innovation, influence next-generation products, and push technological boundaries in a team that values creativity, ownership, and rapid experimentation

Who We Are

OpenWorks is a rapidly growing business operating globally with a passion for exceptional engineering and building on a legacy of defence innovation in the North East of England.

Our products provide ultra-high performance, real-time detection, tracking, identification and targeting of dynamic aerial threats. They have been deployed internationally to protect high profile military and civilian assets, and contribute towards the defeat of nuisance, misguided and maliciously deployed drones during operations.

We are very proud to have supported a wide range of law enforcement and military operators, protecting many of the most high profile sites and individuals around the world.

The amazing things we do are only possible because of a dedicated and passionate team.

Why You’ll Love Working With Us

Join a high-energy, collaborative team where great ideas thrive, challenges are embraced, and people genuinely love what they do.

Here’s what our benefits have to offer:

Competitive remuneration package, with performance-related bonuses and clear progression opportunities

25 days’ holiday + public holidays, with long-service rewards and the option to buy up to 5 additional days

Free breakfast and freshly cooked lunches every day, courtesy of Chef Mark and his team

Private healthcare through Aviva, keeping you feeling your best

Life assurance for peace of mind

Salary sacrifice schemes – including EV car and Cycle to Work options for easy, sustainable travel

Paid team socials – from quiz nights and football to board games and more; we love to have fun together

Pension plan with employer-matched contributions to help you plan for the future

A culture that empowers – we enable change, encourage challenge, and celebrate personal growth

What you’ll be doing

Model Training:

Develop and train machine learning models for object detection and classification, leveraging deep learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow).

Curate and manage training datasets, including proprietary tagging and image metadata.

Fine-tune pre-trained models for specific use cases and optimize hyperparameters for accuracy and speed.

Model Optimisation for Deployment:

Optimize models for efficient inference on edge devices (Jetson, FPGAs, TPU, Hailo).

Profile and improve latency, throughput, and memory efficiency for real-time systems.

Convert and export models for cross-platform or HW optimised (ONNX, TensorFlow Lite, TensorRT, OpenVINO).

Visual Tracking Algorithms:

Design and implement algorithms for visual tracking, sensor fusion, and real-time object localisation.

Integrate AI-powered sensor fusion combining Radar, EO/IR, Lidar, RF, and Acoustic data.

Staying up to date with SOTA:

Monitor and keep up to date with the latest research in CV and AI.

Experiment with the latest models and techniques such as SAM3, Qwen3.

What we’re looking for:

PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or AI

OR

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree with demonstrated industry experience

• Strong proficiency in Python and deep learning frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow)• Hands-on experience developing, training, and evaluating computer vision models• Experience deploying and optimising models using ONNX, TensorRT, OpenVINO, or Hailo• Ability to benchmark approaches and deliver high-performance, production-ready solutions• Desirable: Generative AI experience in tuning/deploying models for summarisation, content generation, or retrieval and familiarity with prompt engineering, LLMs, VLMs to multimodal tasks, including fine-tuning and evaluation