At Matillion, we aim to eliminate friction in data engineering and boost productivity through AI. Our Data Science team focuses on embedding artificial intelligence and machine learning into our products and understanding how customers use them to drive continuous innovation. This AI Engineer - Emerging Technology role sits at the heart of that mission. You’ll be hands-on in developing, optimizing, and experimenting with advanced models to shape Maia and our AI systems end-to-end. If you’re driven by impact, innovation, and working at the frontier of AI in a product-led organisation, this is your role. We follow a hybrid work structure, ideally 2 days per week in the Manchester office, with flexibility for the right person.

Responsibilities

• Train, fine-tune, and evaluate large-language / foundation models, applying parameter-efficient techniques, reinforcement learning, and prompt engineering.
• Build and enhance memory and context management systems: manage short- and long-term context, embeddings, and retrieval pipelines so Maia accesses relevant information effectively.
• Integrate structured knowledge sources such as knowledge graphs and ontologies to improve consistency, reasoning, and reduce hallucinations.
• Develop capabilities for ingesting and processing multiple unstructured and multi-format data types (text, audio, etc.), designing pipelines for parsing, embedding, indexing, and retrieval.
• Optimise inference and system performance: reduce latency, increase throughput, design efficient prompt pipelines, and engineer for cost-effective scaling.
• Define and implement monitoring and evaluation frameworks: track metrics such as accuracy, drift, error rates, and user satisfaction; establish feedback loops to ensure robustness and reliability.
• Collaborate with engineers, product managers, and UX teams to turn experimental techniques into stable, scalable features that deliver measurable value.
• Stay hands-on: write code, prototype solutions, and contribute directly to implementation (with some work in Java where relevant).

Qualifications

• Deep AI Expertise: Proven experience with large language / foundation models, including training, tuning, and applying GenAI techniques such as reinforcement learning, memory and context systems, retrieval augmentation, structured knowledge integration, optimisation, and evaluation.
• Academic Rigor: Master’s degree in a relevant field required; PhD preferred.
• Programming Ability: Strong coding skills; Java is highly desirable as our core codebase.
• Product Delivery Experience: Track record of delivering software features or products in a collaborative environment, ideally within a product-led organisation.
• Curiosity & Drive: Passion for emerging AI technologies with the ability to critically evaluate new research and translate it into practice.
• Collaborative Mindset: Comfortable working cross-functionally to move from prototypes to production-ready features.

Benefits

• Company Equity
• 30 days holiday + bank holidays
• 5 days paid volunteering leave
• Health insurance
• Life Insurance
• Pension
• Access to mental health support

Matillion is the Data Productivity Cloud. We provide tools to load, transform, sync, and orchestrate data for a wide range of use cases—from insights and operational analytics to data science, machine learning, and AI. We are an equal opportunity employer and celebrate diversity. We operate a flexible, hybrid working culture and support an inclusive environment for all team members. If you’re excited to apply cutting-edge AI in a rigorous, innovative, and impactful way, this role may be right for you. If you don’t see a role that fits, please email talent@matillion.com.