Head of Applied Research

Help us use technology to make a big green dent in the universe!

Kraken powers some of the most innovative global developments in energy.

We create the technology that redefines utilities and unlocks a new energy system of the future. By optimising renewable generation, building a more intelligent grid, and empowering utilities to deliver an exceptional customer experience, our operating system is transforming the industry worldwide.

It’s an incredibly exciting time to work in energy. Join us on our mission to improve the lives of ONE BILLION humans within the decade and shape a cleaner, better future for everyone.

Kraken is building the next generation of AI technologies for the energy sector, and we're looking for an exceptional Head of Applied Research to help lead that ambition.

As the advanced technology platform powering some of the world's largest energy utilities, Kraken has a unique combination of deep energy domain expertise along with technological rigor in AI and optimisation, offering a unique opportunity to develop AI technologies that shape how energy systems operate.

Kraken has been investing in the development of energy-specific AI models and intelligent decision-making systems to power products that can understand, predict and ultimately help shape how energy is consumed, managed and distributed.

This isn't a traditional research lab. Our focus is on building technically ambitious, commercially valuable AI systems that solve real-world problems. We want to push the boundaries of what's technically possible while ensuring that the technology we develop translates into meaningful products, measurable impact and lasting competitive advantage.

Reporting into and working closely with our Chief AI Officer, you'll help define Kraken's applied research strategy, establish the technical foundations for our next generation products and cultivate an exceptional team capable of delivering them.

This is an opportunity for someone who combines deep technical expertise with the ambition to build something genuinely new - someone who is equally comfortable with the latest literature in the field, making difficult technical decisions and turning breakthrough ideas into implementable products.

🏡 What you'll own

Shape Kraken's next generation of AI technology

• Partner with our Chief AI Officer to define and execute Kraken's applied research strategy and roadmap, identifying the foundational capabilities and proprietary technologies that will create lasting competitive advantage.

• Lead the development of advanced AI models and architectures designed to understand and model complex energy systems, behavior, and decision-making.

• Explore and develop approaches using foundation models, deep learning, transformer architectures, representation learning as well as emerging techniques to unlock new capabilities.

• Develop generalisable models capable of supporting multiple products and applications per client.

• Establish a technical roadmap that balances ambitious innovation with practical development, scalability and commercial outcomes.

Develop and lead an exceptional technical team

• Develop, lead a high-performing team of AI researchers, research engineers and data scientists.

• Establish a culture of technological excellence, intellectual curiosity, experimentation and strong execution.

• Remain close to the technology, providing hands-on technical direction, challenging data modeling and architectural decisions and helping solve complex modelling problems.

• Attract and develop exceptional technical talent, creating an environment where highly capable individuals can do the best work of their careers.

• Set clear technical priorities, development standards and measures of success while giving the team the autonomy to explore ambitious ideas.

Develop proprietary AI models and intelligent systems

• Lead the design, development, training and evaluation of advanced AI models.

• Develop models capable of learning underlying patterns in energy demand and system behaviour, with the potential to generalise across different applications and environments.

• Advance intelligent decision-making capabilities that move beyond prediction towards sophisticated reasoning, control and optimisation.

• Evaluate new architectures and modelling approaches against existing methods, with the ambition to achieve state-of-the-art performance in strategically important areas.

• Ensure models are technically robust, scalable and capable of being integrated into real-world production environments.

Drive AI research that turns into meaningful products

• Work closely with engineering, product and commercial teams to ensure Kraken’s technological research addresses core client needs, with the potential to translate into products that deliver measurable value for Kraken and its clients.

• Help establish the infrastructure, tooling and development practices required to build, evaluate, deploy and continuously improve sophisticated AI systems.

• Define clear measures of model performance and commercial success, ensuring technical development remains connected to meaningful outcomes.

• Apply advanced AI models to realtime multi-modal agentic workflows in demanding production environments

• Build reusable AI capabilities that can support multiple products and business opportunities rather than isolated, one-off solutions.

Influence Kraken's broader AI direction

• Act as a senior technical authority, helping shape strategic decisions around AI technologies, architectures and investment priorities.

• Provide technical mentorship and guidance to AI, machine learning and engineering teams across Kraken.

• Establish high standards for experimentation, model evaluation and responsible deployment.

• Stay at the forefront literature, developments inAI research, identifying emerging capabilities that could transform software products that underpin the energy industry.

• Support technical assessments of potential AI partnerships and acquisitions, helping inform build, buy and partner decisions.

🧠 What you’ll bring to the party

We're looking for an exceptional technical leader who has demonstrated the ability to develop advanced AI technology and turn it into real-world impact.

We're more interested in what you've built, the problems you've solved and the technical depth you bring than a particular job title.

Essential experience

• Deep expertise in modern machine learning and deep learning, with a strong understanding of foundation models, model architectures, and data pipelines.

• A proven track record of designing, developing or leading the creation of advanced AI models that have delivered measurable technical or commercial outcomes.

• Strong technical knowledge of several areas such as transformer architectures, foundation-model training and adaptation, representation learning, time-series modelling, reinforcement learning and related machine learning techniques.

• Experience working with large, complex datasets and developing models capable of identifying meaningful patterns, generalising across problems and operating at scale.

• A strong understanding of the end-to-end model development lifecycle, including data preparation, training, evaluation, experimentation, inference and production deployment.

• Experience building, leading or technically guiding high-performing teams of machine learning engineers, research engineers or applied AI specialists.

• The ability to translate ambitious technical ideas into clear strategies, practical roadmaps and systems that create meaningful business value.

• Strong technical judgement, including the ability to evaluate emerging approaches, challenge assumptions and make pragmatic decisions about where to invest.

• The ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly and influence senior engineering, product and executive stakeholders.

Technical expertise

You'll bring significant depth in some of the following areas:

• Foundation models, large language models and transformer-based architectures.

• Large-scale pre-training, fine-tuning, distillation and model evaluation.

• Time-series foundation models, representation learning and alternative approaches to structuring and tokenising complex data.

• Reinforcement learning, decision-making models and learning-based optimisation.

• Distributed model training and modern deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or JAX.

• Scalable data pipelines, training infrastructure, inference systems and production ML engineering.

• Model evaluation, experimentation and techniques for improving performance, reliability and generalisation.

We don't expect you to be an expert in every area. What matters most is deep technical expertise, the ability to recognise promising approaches and the judgement to build the right capabilities around you.

⭐️ Bonus Points

• PhD Machine Learning, neuroscience, Computer Science, Physics or a related discipline.

• Experience developing foundation models or advanced AI systems using large-scale data.

• Nice to have: experience with energy systems, electricity markets, demand forecasting, grid flexibility or other complex physical systems.

• Experience applying AI to scientific, industrial or real-world decision-making problems.

• Experience developing novel model architectures or achieving state-of-the-art results in a commercially relevant domain.

• Experience establishing a new technical team, capability or product area from an early stage.

Are you ready for a career with us? We want to ensure you have the right tools and environment to unleash your potential. If you have any accommodation requests, please contact us at [email protected]. We’ll do our best to tailor the experience to your needs so you can feel comfortable, confident and be at your best!

Studies have shown that some groups of people, like women, are less likely to apply to a role unless they meet 100% of the job requirements. Whoever you are, if you like one of our jobs, we encourage you to apply as you might just be the candidate we’re looking for! At Kraken, we're creating a team of genuine, honest, empathetic people. Our people are our strongest asset and the unique skills and perspectives people bring to the team are the driving force of our success. As an equal opportunity employer, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected attribute. We consider all applicants without regard to race, colour, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital or veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected status.

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Please note that, in line with our current recruitment policy, we are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this position; applicants must have the right to work in the country that they're applying to, at the time of application.*