Principal AI/ML Software Engineer – Defense & Aerospace

Leonardo; Southampton; Hybrid; GBP 80,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Time to Recharge (flexi-days)

Award pension scheme (15%+)

Mental health support

Bonus scheme

Free online courses (Coursera/LinkedIn

Referral rewards

Flexible benefits up to £500

Hybrid working

Job summary

Leonardo seeks Senior or Principal Software Engineers with AI/ML expertise to join our Electronics UK software community. You will deliver AI-enabled software for cutting-edge defence and civilian projects, collaborating with systems engineers and leveraging PyTorch/TensorFlow, vector databases, and RAG pipelines.

We value experience in Agile teams, secure data handling, and the ability to deploy scalable AI solutions.

Qualifications

• Experience delivering high-integrity software in regulated environments.
• Strong foundation in AI/ML, transformer architectures and LLM fine-tuning.

Responsibilities

• Lead AI/ML software delivery for civilian and military projects.
• Collaborate with systems engineers on research and deployable software.
• Design, test and continuously improve prompts; monitor model outputs.

Skills

AI/ML proficiency

Agile software

PyTorch

TensorFlow

LLM knowledge

APIs & services

Vector databases

RAG systems

Prompt engineering

Security & governance

High-performance computing

Education

Degree in Computer Science or Engineering

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Leonardo seeks Senior or Principal Software Engineers with AI/ML expertise to join our Electronics UK software community. You will deliver AI-enabled software for cutting-edge defence and civilian projects, collaborating with systems engineers and leveraging PyTorch/TensorFlow, vector databases, and RAG pipelines.

We value experience in Agile teams, secure data handling, and the ability to deploy scalable AI solutions.