Optimization Engineer

Want to solve genuinely difficult optimisation problems at a high-growth AI startup?

A rapidly growing AI startup is hiring an Optimization Engineer to take ownership of its core optimisation engine.

They're building technology that automates complex operational decisions that are still heavily reliant on spreadsheets, manual planning and rigid rules. The product continuously adapts as real-world conditions change, meaning the optimisation engine is central to everything they do.

This is a chance to join a small, highly technical team and have significant ownership over a genuinely difficult engineering problem.

The role

You'll own and improve the optimisation engine, taking it beyond its current baseline and making it faster, more scalable and more intelligent.

You'll work across:

• Python, CP-SAT and OR-Tools
• Mixed Integer Programming and constraint programming
• Heuristics and metaheuristics
• Scheduling, allocation and routing
• Incremental / real-time re-optimisation
• Warm starts and decomposition
• Objective and stability design
• Learning-augmented optimisation
• Benchmarking against real operational data

You'll work closely with the ML team to understand where learned models can improve the optimisation process, rather than relying entirely on manually defined rules.

You'll also work directly with users to understand how the system performs in the real world and turn those insights into better constraints, objectives and algorithms.

What they're looking for

3+ years of experience in applied optimisation / operations research, ideally with production systems behind you.

Strong experience with some combination of:

• CP-SAT / OR-Tools
• Mixed Integer Programming
• Constraint programming
• Large Neighbourhood Search / metaheuristics
• Scheduling, rostering, routing or allocation
• Real-time or incremental optimisation

Strong Python skills are essential.

You don't need experience solving this exact problem. What's important is that you enjoy taking hard optimisation problems and turning them into reliable systems that work outside of a research environment.

Why join?

This is a high-potential startup with a world-class technical team, tackling a genuinely difficult problem with a huge amount of room for technical innovation.

You'll have:

• Significant ownership over the optimisation stack
• Direct influence over the technical direction
• Close collaboration with exceptional ML and engineering talent
• Real-world exposure to the problems you're solving
• Competitive salary + meaningful equity
• Coding / AI tooling credits
• London-based hybrid working

If you're an optimisation engineer who wants to work on problems that haven't been neatly solved already, I'd be keen to speak.