Sovereign AI Model Development Lead

NestAI; Helsinki; On-site; EUR 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare

Flex benefits

Lunch benefit

Team lunches

Mac or PC

Holiday pay

Phone plan

Job summary

NestAI is seeking a Model Development Lead to set the technical direction for a large-scale, battlefield-focused AI model program. You will own architecture, roadmap, and governance, while growing a high-caliber team focused on autonomy and orchestration.

The role requires deep experience with multimodal models and constrained deployments. You will translate bold strategic goals into executable plans, define data and training strategies, and lead collaborations with external research partners

Qualifications

• Senior experience leading training of large-scale multimodal AI models.
• Strong technical competence in model development (pre-training, fine-tuning, evaluation).
• Experience deploying models in constrained environments (edge/air-gapped).
• Ability to define benchmarks, failure modes, and feedback loops for models.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical architecture and roadmap with verifiable milestones.
• Map NestAI strategy to the foundation model layer and company roadmap.
• Iterate quickly with the team, turning ambiguity into progress.
• Attract and retain top talent by communicating technical vision.
• Report progress with clear scope, phased plans, and risk assessment.
• Grow and staff the team to enable company success.

Skills

Senior leadership

Multimodal AI training

Model deployment

Evaluation discipline

Architecture & roadmap

Education

PhD in quantitative field

Tools

Quantisation

Distillation

Edge deployment

Job description

About NestAI

NestAI is a European AI lab for defence delivering the adaptive operating system for modern battlefield operations. We develop adaptive intelligence for unmanned and command systems: AI that continuously learns from operational data and adapts to changing conditions.

NestOS is our open, modular and interoperable platform that enables this at scale and keeps capability evolution under sovereign European control. Founded in 2025 by Peter Sarlin, whose previous company Silo AI became Europe's largest AI acquisition, NestAI brings together over 200 engineers and scientists and partners with leading European defence forces and industry.

Role Description

Europe builds the drones and the platforms. It does not build the models that fly and command them. The intelligence inside Europe’s defences runs on models trained elsewhere, and access to the best models can be cut off overnight. NestAI is building sovereign AI models for defence to change this. We are initially focusing on models for battlefield autonomy and orchestration, bringing together real operational data, simulation and synthetic data to build models that can continuously adapt as the battlefield changes.

We're hiring a Model Development Lead to help us drive the effort. This is a senior technology leadership role where you'll set technical and architectural direction for an existing team, making the calls on what to build and growing the team around you.

You will chart what a large-scale battlefield foundation model could become, looking beyond the requirements of today’s product roadmaps. This includes what battlefield data it should learn from, what reasoning capabilities it should develop, how it could support strategic, operational, and tactical decision-making and how it could adapt to new tactics emerging from the field.

In order to succeed, you need deep technical competence in model development, including pre-training, fine-tuning, evaluation, multimodal learning, long-context reasoning, model compression, and understanding of deployment trade-offs.

What you'll do

• Own the technical architecture and roadmap, translating an ambitious vision into a sequenced plan that can be executed and that creates verifiable milestones.

• Build an understanding of NestAI strategy of battlefield autonomy and orchestration and map how the model development acts as a layer that elevates the overall company roadmap through the foundation model.

• Operate with real decision authority to make sure that we iterate quickly and fail fast. You’re not just an advisory voice but charted with making ambiguity reality.

• Represent the project's technical thinking to help attract the caliber of talent this kind of work requires.

• Report progress in a form leadership can act on: an agreed scoping, a phased plan with clear decision gates, and an honest account of risks and opportunities.

• Grow and staff the team around so that you and the company are set out for success.

What we're looking for

• Senior experience in training and leading the training of large-scale, multimodal AI models- ideally from a frontier AI lab (e.g. Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind) or a comparably serious scaled effort.

• You have deep technical competence in model development, including pre-training, fine-tuning, evaluation, multimodal learning, long-context reasoning, model compression, and deployment trade-offs.

• Experience building or adapting models for constrained deployment environments, including quantisation, distillation, pruning, or other compression techniques for edge, embedded, or air-gapped systems.

• Strong evaluation discipline: ability to define domain-specific benchmarks, failure modes, acceptance criteria, and feedback loops for models where standard academic benchmarks are not enough.

• Experience working across model architecture, data strategy, training infrastructure, inference deployment, and product integration.

• Experience collaborating with external research partners while maintaining internal technical ownership and architectural control.

Nice to have: a PhD in a relevant quantitative field; prior exposure to autonomous systems, simulation, or edge-constrained systems; experience or interest in defence, dual-use, or other regulated/sovereign-technology environments.

Why join NestAI

At NestAI, you’ll build meaningful, real-world technology as part of a world-class team of engineers, scientists, and experienced professionals. You’ll work on systems where reliability genuinely matters, contribute to Europe’s security and resilience, and solve problems that demand depth, trust, and craftsmanship.

If you want to build with purpose — and with leading experts in the field — you’ve come to the right place.

Perks & Benefits

We offer a growing set of practical benefits to support your work and wellbeing, day to day:

• Occupational healthcare (currently provided by Mehiläinen)

• Epassi Flex benefit (sports, culture, commuting, wellbeing)

• Lunch benefit (25% tax-free coverage)

• Regular team lunches and all-hands events

• Your choice of Mac or PC

• Holiday allowance (50% of holiday salary)

• Phone benefit according to company policy (subscription and device)

  
  

We are continuously developing and expanding our benefits as we grow.

Practicalities

Employment is subject to applicable security screening (including SUPO, where required).

NestAI is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all applicants based on their skills, experience, and potential.

The preferred location for this position is Finland, but Sweden, Estonia or other EU countries are possible as well.