Optimisation Engineer — Mathematical Optimisation & AI

RosterLab Limited.; Auckland; Hybrid; NZD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity/ESOP

Job summary

RosterLab Limited in Auckland, NZ is seeking an Optimisation Engineer to join our R&D team in a hybrid, full-time role.

You will develop optimization models for hospital rostering and contribute to AI agents integration, with real-world impact. You will work across mathematical optimisation, constraint programming and metaheuristics, prototype rapidly, and help turn research into production software at a fast-moving SaaS startup.

Qualifications

• Master’s or PhD in STEM is required.
• Strong mathematical and algorithmic problem-solving ability.
• Experience with mathematical optimisation, constraint programming, heuristics, metaheuristics, algorithms, or operations research.
• Strong programming skills and comfortable rapidly prototyping and testing new approaches.
• Interested in the intersection of optimisation and modern AI/LLM systems.
• Research-minded and experimental — you enjoy benchmarking approaches and finding better solutions.

Responsibilities

• Develop and improve optimisation models for hospital rostering problems.
• Work with techniques such as integer programming, decomposition, and metaheuristics.
• Improve solution quality, robustness, and computational performance.
• Build modelling techniques mapping to real-world scenarios.
• Collaborate with engineering and product teams to productionise research and prototypes.

Skills

Mathematical optimization

Constraint programming

Heuristics

Metaheuristics

Programming

Rapid prototyping

AI/LLM systems

Research mindset

Education

Master's or PhD in STEM

Job description

Auckland — Hybrid — NZ Full-time Salary + ESOP

Help develop the core intelligence behind AI-powered hospital rostering and solve difficult optimisation problems with direct real-world impact.

RosterLab is a fast-growing, seed-funded SaaS startup building AI-powered optimisation software for hospital rostering. Our technology helps hospitals automate complex scheduling, improve staff work-life balance, reduce administrative workload, and operate more efficiently.

We are looking for an Optimisation Engineer to join our R&D team and help develop the core intelligence behind our product.

What You’ll Do

Your work will sit across two closely connected areas:

Mathematical Optimisation

• Develop and improve optimisation models for complex hospital rostering problems.
• Work with techniques such as integer programming, decomposition, and metaheuristics.
• Improve solution quality, robustness, and computational performance.
• Build new modelling techniques that map closely to real-world scenarios.

AI Agents

• Help develop our AI rostering agent, which interacts heavily with our optimisation engine and scheduling algorithms.
• Build ways for the agent to understand rostering requirements, configure and interrogate optimisation models, diagnose problems, and improve solutions.
• Explore how LLMs and optimisation algorithms can work together to automate increasingly complex parts of the rostering process.

You’ll work closely with our engineering and product teams to turn research and prototypes into production software.

Who You Are

• Master’s or PhD in a STEM discipline is required, ideally Operations Research, Engineering Science, Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, or a related quantitative field.
• Strong mathematical and algorithmic problem-solving ability.
• Experience with mathematical optimisation, constraint programming, heuristics, metaheuristics, algorithms, or operations research.
• Strong programming skills and comfortable rapidly prototyping and testing new approaches.
• Interested in the intersection of optimisation and modern AI/LLM systems.
• Research-minded and experimental — you enjoy benchmarking approaches, investigating why algorithms behave the way they do, and finding better solutions.
• Comfortable working on difficult, open-ended problems in a fast-moving startup.

What We Offer

• Work on genuinely difficult optimisation problems with direct real-world impact.
• Significant freedom to research, prototype, and introduce new approaches.
• Equity/ESOP in the company.
• Direct influence over RosterLab’s core optimisation and AI technology.
• The opportunity to improve working conditions for healthcare professionals around the world.
• Rapid technical and career growth as an early member of the R&D team.