Research Engineer: Frontier AI & Robotics for Autonomy

Ellison Institute, LLC; Oxford; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Enhanced holiday pay

Pension

Life Assurance

Income Protection

Private Medical Insurance

Hospital Cash Plan

Therapy Services

Perk Box

Electric Car Scheme

Job summary

Ellison Institute is seeking a researcher to advance frontier foundation models for autonomous scientific experimentation in Oxford. You will collaborate with AI researchers, software engineers, robotics specialists, and domain experts to drive practical deployment and publish impactful work.

The role emphasizes building end-to-end ML pipelines, data curation, and rigorous evaluation to continuously improve model performance in real-world settings.

Qualifications

• MSc, PhD, or equivalent in Computer Science, AI, ML, Robotics, or related discipline.
• Hands-on with frontier foundation models: LLMs, VLMs, VLA, embodied AI & world models.
• Experience with continuous pre-training, post-training, supervised fine-tuning, RL, and similar techniques.
• End-to-end ML pipelines: data curation, training, evaluation, and iterative improvement.
• Experience in interdisciplinary team settings and clear communication.
• Impact-driven mindset aimed at real-world deployment.

Responsibilities

• Drive technical work to improve frontier foundation models for autonomous experimentation.
• Research data-centric factors limiting model performance and develop novel approaches.
• Define and source data with domain experts for high-value datasets.
• Design and maintain scalable pipelines for training, evaluation, benchmarking, and reproducible research.
• Analyse results and translate insights into practical performance improvements.
• Collaborate with AI researchers, software and robotics engineers, and domain experts.
• Contribute new research ideas and publish when appropriate, balancing deployment focus.
• Communicate findings clearly across teams to shape AutoLab AI platform direction.

Skills

Foundation models

ML pipelines

Interdisciplinary teamwork

Communication skills

Reinforcement learning

Education

MSc/PhD or equivalent

Job description

Ellison Institute is seeking a researcher to advance frontier foundation models for autonomous scientific experimentation in Oxford. You will collaborate with AI researchers, software engineers, robotics specialists, and domain experts to drive practical deployment and publish impactful work.

The role emphasizes building end-to-end ML pipelines, data curation, and rigorous evaluation to continuously improve model performance in real-world settings.