Research Engineer - AI

Grasp; London; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading company in educational technology seeks an R&D Engineer to design and develop innovative learning tools. The role involves extensive programming, machine learning, and applied mathematics, with opportunities to lead projects in a collaborative environment. Applicants should have a strong background in software engineering and a passion for learning.

Benefits

Reasonable London salary

Employee options scheme (EMI)

Office-based team

Access to all Grasp's learning tools

Dinner/Breakfast

Statutory pension (NEST)

GPUs

Qualifications

• 8+ years programming and software engineering experience.
• Designed and built systems involving LLM pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Lead projects and take initiative on R&D tasks.
• Translate strategic objectives into technical roadmaps.

Skills

Programming

Machine Learning

Applied Mathematics

Education

Advanced Degree in Computer Science

Advanced Degree in Physics

Advanced Degree in Applied Mathematics

Advanced Degree in Electronic Engineering

Tools

Python

FastAPI

Typescript

React

GCP

k8s

Job description

Company Mission & Product

We believe that everyone can have equal and unconstrained access to educational experiences on par with Oxford, Cambridge, CalTech, et cetera. We believe that this can be achieved with a new class of learning tools, which combine advances in cognitive science, language models, and datasets. We are building these tools in England.

Our first product, Grasp Concepts, enables students to disambiguate and learn concepts through great online explanations and is deployed with design partners including Imperial College London. Our second product, Grasp Pathways, decomposes learning goals and suggests flexible learning trajectories to reach them, using reputable learning resources like books and lectures, and is in private alpha. An on-demand, online oxbridge-like experience.

Team and Funding

We've raised significant capital from top tier investors including Balderton Capital, Mozilla (yes, Firefox), and Point9. Our founder Ed built the Payments and Trading products at Revolut alongside his bachelors and masters degrees. He was also one of a handful of investors at DST Global. Our team have backgrounds in elite institutions including Revolut, Huawei, Max-Planck Institute, Oxford, and Cambridge. We're building something so hard we cannot afford to work with anyone but the best.

R&D Engineering at Grasp

This is a system design, prototyping, and development role, with a high degree of individual contribution. The systems you build will involve machine learning, generative AI, and applied maths (e.g. graph algorithm) approaches as you solve problems for online self-directed learners. As an individual contributor, you will be expected to lead projects and take initiative when new problems present themselves. In doing so, you will need to decompose company objectives into clearly defined roadmaps and break these down into near term tasks, splitting these between yourself and others. You will work with all of your colleagues (designers, engineers, founder) on a daily basis and interact with users. The company is flat and collaborative in structure. You should find our mission and the products you build compelling, i.e. you like learning new things in your free time.

Tech

Backend: Python, FastAPI, UV for package management (we have a monorepo), domain driven design, events-based architecture

Frontend: Typescript, React, Bun for package management (monorepo again), Tailwind CSS, Shadcn

Infra: GCP, k8s

Requirements

• Extensive work experience involving programming, machine learning, and applied mathematics for R&D projects
• 8+ years programming and software engineering in industry, including several years working with Python
• Previous involvement designing new products (e.g. research engineer embedded in a product team working on something novel)
• Designed and built (as an individual contributor) systems involving LLM pipelines as components
• Ability to translate high-level strategic objectives into technical roadmap with regular milestones
• An advanced degree in Computer Science, Physics, Applied Mathematics, Electronic Engineering, or similar
  
  
  

Benefits

• Reasonable London salary
• Employee options scheme (EMI)
• Office-based team
• Access to all Grasps learning tools for your personal self-study
• Dinner/Breakfast
• Statutory pension (NEST)
• GPUs