Machine Learning Engineer, Global Public Sector

Scale’s mission is to develop reliable AI systems for the world's most important decisions. Our core work consists of: - Creating custom AI applications that will impact millions of citizens - Generating high-quality training data for national LLMs - Upskilling and advisory services to spread the impact of AI Scale is hiring ML Research Engineers to bridge the gap between emerging AI capabilities and mission-critical, real-world impact. In our Global Public Sector (GPS) division, we don’t just implement tools; we conduct applied research to solve the unique challenges of sovereign AI. Your role is to move beyond off-the-shelf implementations. You will lead the research into Agent Design, Reliability, and AI Safety, developing novel system architectures that power high-stakes government applications. You will be the bridge between a research paper and a production-ready system that functions at scale. The Mission - Applied Agent Research: Leading the design of reliable, multi-step agentic systems and long-horizon reasoning frameworks that can solve complex problems for national security and public policy. - Systemic Evaluation & Red-Teaming: Developing rigorous benchmarks and evaluation protocols to ensure AI systems are safe, unbiased, and performant in high-stakes, non-commercial environments. - Model Optimisation & Selection: Conducting deep-dive research into model performance (both open-weight and closed) to identify the best tools for niche domains, optimising them through context engineering, RAG, and other inference-time techniques. What You Will Do - Architect Agentic Systems: Design and build agent architectures, the harnesses, tool-use protocols, and logic flows that allow LLMs to function as reliable, autonomous agents in complex workflows. - Drive Reliability & Safety: Research and implement robust evaluation frameworks. This includes red-teaming for sovereign AI requirements and developing strategies to mitigate hallucinations in regulated data environments. - Synthesise Deep Research: Build agents capable of autonomous information synthesis and long-horizon reasoning, enabling users to analyse massive datasets and extract actionable insights. - Optimize for Niche Domains: Evaluate and adapt models for specialised use cases, such as LLM reasoning for low-resource languages, complex OCR tasks, or working in GPU-constrained environments - Build Evaluation Frontiers: Create new, automated benchmarks that define what success looks like for AI in the public sector, ensuring our systems meet the highest standards of accuracy and sovereignty. - Consult as a Technical Authority: Act as a subject matter expert for public sector leaders, advising on the practical limits, safety requirements, and performance trade-offs of emerging AI technologies. Ideally, You Have - Engineering Rigour: Exceptional proficiency in Python and experience building agentic harnesses or AI infrastructure. You write production-ready code that is modular, scalable, and reliable. - Applied Research Mindset: A track record of taking theoretical AI concepts and turning them into functional prototypes or products. You know how to read a paper and determine if its methods are actually viable for a production system. - Evaluation Expertise: Experience in LLM benchmarking, red-teaming, or building evaluations that go beyond standard academic datasets. - Advanced Degree: A Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Mathematics, or a related field (with a focus on ML) is preferred, but we value demonstrated impact and engineering excellence. Nice to Haves - Agentic Systems Expert: Deep experience in building multi-agent systems, including chain-of-thought optimisation and tool-calling reliability. - Sovereign AI Experience: Experience working with highly regulated data environments, on-premise deployments, or sensitive government use cases. - Inference Optimisation: Knowledge of how to optimise model performance for environments with limited GPU capacity or specific latency requirements. - Zero-to-One Mindset: You are comfortable navigating ambiguity and enjoy defining research directions from scratch to solve a specific product or mission need. For those applying based in Qatar: Residency and employment in Qatar requires certain permissions (visa and permits) issued by the Qatari authorities. As part of the application process, candidates will be asked to provide personal information, including residency status and nationality, which is required for visa processing. This information is collected solely for immigration compliance purposes and will be not used as a criterion in any hiring decision unless such use is lawfully permitted. Visa issuance is at the discretion of the Qatari authorities. If you are successful in your application, you will be required to provide the documentation requested by Scale and the authorities to obtain the necessary permissions for you to live and work in Qatar, and Sc