AI Engineer

Technology Innovation Institute (TII) is a publicly funded research institution based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. TII is home to a diverse community of leading scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and researchers focused on transforming challenges into pioneering research and technology prototypes that advance society.

This role is part of TII’s Robotics Research Center. We are seeking a highly skilled AI Engineer with deep expertise in Large Language Models (LLMs), Vision-Language Models (VLMs), and agentic model architectures. The ideal candidate should possess a strong foundation in both research and engineering, with hands-on experience in developing, fine-tuning, and deploying advanced AI systems. You will contribute to building scalable, production-ready AI applications that integrate multimodal reasoning and enhance autonomous intelligent agents.

Key Responsibilities:

• LLM/VLM Development & Integration: Design, train, fine-tune, and optimize LLMs and VLMs for real-world applications.
• Agentic AI Systems: Develop and orchestrate autonomous frameworks capable of multi-step reasoning, planning, and tool use.
• Engineering & Deployment: Construct scalable, low-latency inference systems for large models using frameworks such as DeepSpeed, vLLM, TensorRT, or ONNX Runtime. Implement distributed training and optimize deployment for edge devices, GPUs, and cloud platforms.
• Research & Innovation: Keep current with advancements in LLMs, multimodal models, and autonomous agents.

Core Competencies:

• Strong understanding of LLMs, VLMs, transformers, and multimodal architectures.
• Experience with fine-tuning, LoRA/QLoRA, quantization, distillation, and evaluation.
• Knowledge in neurosymbolic methodologies and reinforcement learning techniques (RLHF, RLAIF).
• Familiarity with tools such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, and OpenAI Agents.

Programming Skills:

• Proficiency in Python for AI research and deployment.
• Experience in C++ for performance-critical components and model inference optimization.

Qualifications:

• Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, AI/ML, Robotics, or related field.
• Proven track record in working with LLMs, VLMs, or agentic frameworks.
• Experience in productionizing AI systems at scale.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.

Preferred (Nice-to-Have):

• Experience with reinforcement learning.
• Background in robotics, simulation environments, or embodied AI.
• Publications in AI conferences.

At TII, we strive to help society overcome its greatest challenges through rigorous scientific discovery, utilizing state-of-the-art facilities and collaborating with leading international institutions. Our approach fosters new breakthroughs in AI, advanced materials, autonomous robotics, cryptography, digital security, directed energy, quantum computing, and secure systems.