Machine Learning Engineer (SC)

Machine Learning Engineer (SC) - Contract role - Hybrid working (Hampshire) - £competitive

Synergize Consulting are now hiring for a Machine Learning Engineer to work at a leading defence client on a contract basis.

The successful candidate will fuse machine learning optimisation with DevOps and containerisation processes to assist the team in building and developing cutting-edge digital systems for a customer in the public sector.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop and optimise Machine Learning solutions using YOLO, ONNX, and NVIDIA GPU/vGPU environments.
• Lead the ML pipeline for object recognition to meet operational objectives, including tuning accuracy for specific scenarios (eg, detecting containers too high/low).
• Build and contribute to the Low-Level Design (LLD), including:
• Component breakdown and interface specifications.
• Hosting requirements (compute, GPU configuration, storage, and networking).
• Logging, monitoring (eg, rsyslog, SCOM), and system security design.
• Deliver production-quality ML software integrated into the DIS stack, with robust Ansible playbooks, unit tests, and interface controls.
• Support integration with subsystems and ensure system-wide acceptance criteria are met.
• Participate in code reviews, peer reviews, and QA cycles including static analysis tools (eg, Lint, SonarQube).
• Contribute to deliverables tracked via JIRA task management and support design updates post IT Health Check.
• Attend site visits if necessary to gather data or investigate edge case errors in Real Time ML performance.

Skills & Experience Required

• A strong background in software engineering which includes machine learning components, and expertise in using YOLO (You Only Look Once) or similar object detection frameworks.
• Experience with NVIDIA GPU optimisation or ONNX runtime environments.
• Strong understanding of computer vision, OCR, and image/video processing
• Proficiency in SOAP API development.
• Working knowledge of DevOps technologies including OpenShift (OCP 4.x), Kubernetes, and Cilium.
• Experience with MongoDB, Longhorn, and Zone Minder camera systems would be desirable
• Ability to create scalable and maintainable codebases and deployment automation via Ansible.
• Development of unit tests, test plans/scripts, and validated test results in collaboration with QA teams.
• Proven experience with integration testing and documentation of interface control.

Desirable Attributes

• Strong collaboration and communication skills.
• Comfortable working in cross-functional teams and supporting peers in engineering, QA, and systems integration.
• Experience investigating and tuning ML systems in real-world or onsite environments

Due to the nature of the client, it would be an advantage for candidates to hold, or be eligible and willing to undergo, a certain level of security clearance (SC).