Core AI Engineer

Barlowe LLP; Greater London; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Highly competitive compensation

30 days annual leave

9% company pension contributions

Comprehensive healthcare and life assurance

Lunch provided via Just Eat

Cycle-to-work scheme

Monthly company events

Job summary

Barlowe LLP is seeking a skilled Engineer for its Core AI team based in London. This role involves designing and operating platforms for AI model inference and serving, ensuring secure access to tools and data. The ideal candidate will have strong expertise in C#, Python, and Kubernetes.

Additional perks include competitive compensation, 30 days annual leave, and comprehensive healthcare benefits.

Qualifications

• Strong expertise in C# and Python, building distributed systems and platform-level software.
• Deep Kubernetes expertise, including multi-tenant cluster operations and platform extensions.
• Experience with Docker, Terraform, and CI/CD in controlled or regulated environments.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, including networking, storage, security, and performance.
• Experience with model serving and inference infrastructure, including deployment, scaling, and optimisation of open models.
• Clear communication skills, with ability to explain complex concepts and produce high-quality technical documentation.

Responsibilities

• Designing and operating model serving infrastructure, including inference pipelines and scheduling systems.
• Building and running centralised MCP servers, ensuring secure, reliable access to enterprise tools and data.
• Owning platform reliability, performance, and scalability across Kubernetes-based infrastructure.
• Building self-service tooling and APIs to enable teams to provision and consume AI infrastructure independently.
• Integrating platform services with existing technology stacks, ensuring clear interfaces, monitoring and CI/CD.
• Evaluating and adopting open-source technologies and applying emerging best practices to improve the platform.

Skills

C#

Python

Kubernetes

Docker

Terraform

CI/CD

Tools

Prometheus

Grafana

OpenTelemetry

Job description

We tackle the most complex problems in quantitative finance, by bringing scientific clarity to financial complexity. From our London HQ, we unite world-class researchers and engineers in an environment that values deep exploration and methodical execution - because the best ideas take time to evolve. Together we’re building a world-class platform to amplify our teams’ most powerful ideas. As part of our engineering team, you’ll shape the platforms and tools that drive high‑impact research - designing systems that scale, accelerate discovery and support innovation across the firm. Take the next step in your career.

The role

The Core AI team is a centralised infrastructure team within the AI Engineering department. We build, operate and scale the foundational platform that powers AI innovation across G‑Research, including on‑prem open model inference, model serving, AI developer experience tooling, centralised MCP servers and secure agent sandboxing. We provide the foundations that enable teams across the firm to innovate and deliver with confidence, working closely with our Applied AI team. As an Engineer in Core AI, you will work across four key areas: Infrastructure and serving – design, build and operate on‑prem model inference and serving platforms; MCP server infrastructure – build and operate centralised MCP servers that provide secure, governed access to tools and data; Security and sandboxing – design and implement infrastructure for safe execution of autonomous AI agents in a regulated environment; Developer AI experience – improve developer experience through seamless integrations and user‑facing tools.

Key responsibilities of the role include:

• Designing and operating model serving infrastructure, including inference pipelines and scheduling systems
• Building and running centralised MCP servers, ensuring secure, reliable access to enterprise tools and data
• Owning platform reliability, performance and scalability across Kubernetes‑based infrastructure, including observability, capacity planning and incident response
• Building self‑service tooling and APIs to enable teams to provision and consume AI infrastructure independently
• Integrating platform services with existing technology stacks, ensuring clear interfaces, monitoring and CI/CD
• Evaluating and adopting open‑source technologies and applying emerging best practices to improve the platform

Who are we looking for?

We value pragmatic engineers who combine deep infrastructure expertise with strong systems thinking and clear communication. You should enjoy building reliable, secure platforms at scale – the kind of foundations that hundreds of engineers and quants depend on daily without needing to think about.

Essential skills and experience:

• Strong expertise in C# and Python, building distributed systems and platform‑level software
• Deep Kubernetes expertise, including multi‑tenant cluster operations and platform extensions
• Experience with Docker, Terraform and CI/CD in controlled or regulated environments
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, including networking, storage, security and performance
• Experience with model serving and inference infrastructure, including deployment, scaling and optimisation of open models
• Clear communication skills, with ability to explain complex concepts and produce high‑quality technical documentation

Desirable skills and experience:

• Experience with MCP or similar platform services
• Familiarity with sandboxing and workload isolation technologies
• Experience in quantitative finance or low‑latency systems
• AWS experience particularly in hybrid environments
• Experience with observability tooling such as Prometheus, Grafana or OpenTelemetry
• Contributions to open‑source projects in relevant domains

Why join us?

• Highly competitive compensation plus annual discretionary bonus
• Lunch provided (via Just Eat for Business) and dedicated barista bar
• 30 days annual leave
• 9% company pension contributions
• Informal dress code and excellent work/life balance
• Comprehensive healthcare and life assurance
• Cycle‑to‑work scheme
• Monthly company events

G-Research is committed to cultivating and preserving an inclusive work environment. We are an ideas‑driven business and we place great value on diversity of experience and opinions. We want to ensure that applicants receive a recruitment experience that enables them to perform at their best.

If you have a disability or a special need that requires accommodation please let us know in the relevant section.

At G-Research, we are passionate about the intersection of finance, technology, and the future. We offer a dynamic, flexible and highly stimulating culture where world‑beating ideas are cultivated and rewarded. We are proud to employ some of the best people in their field and to nurture their talent in our collaborative working environment.