Research Specialist - AI Systems

Location: Hybrid, with three office days per week in Bristol, Ipswich, or London, UK, and two flexible remote days.

Company

hirify.global is a UK communications group operating telecommunications, connectivity, infrastructure, and technology businesses including BT, EE, Openreach, and Plusnet.

What you will do

• Research and develop techniques for scalable and distributed AI systems.
• Design, build, and evaluate prototypes and experimental AI infrastructure.
• Work across machine learning models, inference, Kubernetes, GPUs, networks, and distributed systems.
• Benchmark and analyse latency, throughput, scalability, and resource utilisation.
• Investigate emerging AI and infrastructure technologies and collaborate with researchers, engineers, technology companies, and research organisations.
• Communicate results through technical reports, demonstrations, publications, and industry events.

Requirements

• Practical experience with machine learning or LLM systems.
• Strong Python development skills and confidence working in Linux environments.
• Working knowledge of Kubernetes, containers, and cloud-native infrastructure.
• Understanding of distributed systems fundamentals, including scalability, latency, and throughput.
• Experience designing experiments, benchmarking systems, and analysing performance.
• Ability to work from the Bristol, Ipswich, or London offices three days per week.

Nice to have

• Master's degree, PhD, or equivalent industry experience in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• Experience with LLM serving frameworks such as vLLM, TGI, Triton, or Ray Serve.
• Knowledge of GPU scheduling, partitioning, resource sharing, distributed AI inference, model parallelism, or large-scale AI infrastructure.
• Familiarity with networking, agentic AI systems, and multi-agent architectures.
• Publications, conference presentations, or open-source contributions.

Culture & Benefits

• Work within BT Research and an established telecoms research organisation focused on sovereign AI and real-world deployment.
• 10% on-target annual bonus.
• Private GP access, paid carers leave, and enhanced maternity, paternity, and adoption leave.
• Pension scheme with 5% employee and 10% employer contributions.
• Holiday purchase scheme, discounted BT and EE products, and optional healthcare, dental, and gym benefits.