AI Engineer Defence - 3 months Contract

Artificial Intelligence EngineerContract: 3 months - with potential to extend Salary: Very Competitive Location: Oxford Work Pattern: Hybrid \& Flexible Security clearance: *This role requires an active SC or DV. We will not be able to progress with your application if you do not currently hold one.* *A NOTE FROM THE FOUNDERS* *Oxford Dynamics is at an inflection point.* We operate in some of the most complex and high-stakes environments in the world -defence, national security, AI and robotics. The decisions we make now will define not just how fast we grow, but who we become. You will work closely with the entire team. You will be trusted with judgment calls. You will influence the business. And you will see the impact of your work every day. If you are excited by ownership, pace and purpose - and by building something that genuinely matters - we would love to hear from you. Who we are Founded in 2019, Oxford Dynamics is a fast-growing UK frontier technology company developing both digital and physical AI systems built to operate in dynamic, mission-critical environments. At the core of everything we build is AVIS™ (A Very Intelligent System), our orchestration platform: the intelligence layer that fuses multi-modal data, including text, imagery, telemetry and sensor feeds, so operators can interrogate complex information at speed and make better decisions under pressure. AVIS™ powers our digital decision products, such as ORION for multi-source decision-to-effect, and it powers our physical platforms, including STRIDER for CBRN operations and BARBARIAN for explosive ordnance disposal. The same brain reasons across the screen and the machine. We work where wrong decisions can be catastrophic, partnering with defence and security organisations internationally to help protect nations, infrastructure and lives What You Will Be Doing We are looking for AI engineers who build and ship agentic AI systems in production. You will work at the cutting edge of agentic and generative AI - designing multi-agent pipelines, integrating large language models and vision-language models into real workflows, and deploying them into secure and air-gapped environments for defence and national security customers. This is a delivery role. You will own features end-to-end - from design through to deployment in constrained environments where reliability and security matter more than speed to market. Requirements Key Responsibilities * Architect, build, and optimise multi-agent AI systems using frameworks such as LangGraph, Haystack, or equivalent * Integrate LLMs and vision-language models into agent workflows for reasoning, search, summarisation, and task execution * Deploy AI systems into cloud, on-premises, and air-gapped environments * Build production-ready pipelines from data ingestion through to inference * Experience with observability for AI systems, including agent behaviour, model performance, and failure modes * Collaborate with engineers, product leads, and customers to translate requirements into working systems * Contribute to evaluation frameworks, system integration, and performance tracking * Act as a technical authority for agentic AI - setting design patterns for junior engineers Requirements * Commercial experience building multi-agent or agentic AI systems in production * Strong Python skills and hands-on experience with LLM frameworks (LangGraph, LangChain, Haystack, or similar) * Experience deploying AI/ML systems into production environments * Familiarity with Docker, Git, and cloud platforms (AWS preferred) * Understanding of secure deployment patterns - air-gapped, on-premises, or sovereign cloud Preferred * Experience with multimodal reasoning * Experience with edge or offline AI deployments * Familiarity with Kubernetes (EKS/OpenShift) for monitoring and managing deployed applications * MLOps experience - model evaluation, monitoring, reproducibility * Observability tooling for agentic systems (model drift, agent behaviour, performance monitoring) * Experience with agent orchestration patterns and inter-agent communication protocols (e.g.A2A) * Familiarity with MCPs for tool and context integration in agentic systems * Familiarity with secure-by-design development principles (ISO 27001, NIST, OWASP) * Experience in defence, national security, or similarly regulated environments * Contributions to open-source AI/ML projects Soft Skills * Delivery-focused - you ship working systems, not prototypes * Comfortable operating across the stack whenneeded * Strong communicator - can present to technical and non-technical stakeholders * Thrives in small teams with high ownership Benefits Why Oxford Dynamics? Join the most exciting growth area in the UK: AI and Robotics! Every member of the Oxford Dynamics team has a major impact on the products and services we provide. Regardless of job title, you will get to make a real difference and learn from colleagues about all areas of our business. *Oxford Dynamics is committed to creating an inclusive team experience for all. Regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, disability, or parental status, we believe our work is at its best when everyone feels free to be their authentic self.*