If you would like to discuss DEI at Futureheads please contact <a href="mailto:team@wearefutureheads.co.uk">team@wearefutureheads.co.uk</a>

<div style="text-align: center;">We aim to be brave. We won’t get it right all the time, but we believe it's better to say and do something rather than nothing, and to learn from our mistakes.</div>

But we’re now striving to be better and to drive positive change. We firmly believe that everyone is welcome at Futureheads, and we aim to demonstrate that in everything we do. We’re committed to creating a culture that reflects the make-up of society, we believe diversity promotes innovation, growth and equality. We are committed to being intentionally inclusive by understanding who we have in our culture and how we can best add equity to each individual, and contribute towards their professional development. We are actively helping our clients do the same. We celebrate the difference and rich experience that diversity brings, and we commit to ensuring that everyone we interact with, both within and outside our business, is valued, respected, and treated equally, regardless of their background, identity or circumstances. We aim to understand every individual’s capabilities, and to give them what they need to succeed to their fullest potential.

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Futureheads in Numbers

Our client is building AI systems that work in the real world. They need a Senior Front End Developer who owns how that system behaves on desktop, with a focus on reliability, performance, and real-time behaviour in production applications. The Role You will build and maintain cross-platform desktop applications that bring AI capabilities directly to users, ensuring a fast, stable, and seamless experience across macOS and Windows. What You'll Own<ul><li>Cross-platform desktop applications built in Electron</li><li>Responsive and scalable UIs for real-time collaboration</li><li>Desktop-specific functionality: file system access, native notifications, auto-updates, and deep linking</li><li>Integration of AI-powered features via backend APIs</li><li>Startup time, memory usage, and runtime performance optimisation</li><li>Large local state and message history management</li><li>Smooth real-time updates: messages, typing indicators, and presence</li><li>Stability across macOS and Windows environments</li></ul>What They're Looking For<ul><li>Proven experience building production Electron applications</li><li>Strong proficiency in JavaScript and TypeScript</li><li>Experience with React or similar UI frameworks</li><li>Solid understanding of the desktop application lifecycle</li><li>Experience with IPC communication and local storage (SQLite, IndexedDB, filesystem)</li><li>Familiarity with WebSockets or other real-time transport mechanisms</li><li>Strong debugging and performance profiling skills</li><li>Familiarity with native OS behaviours on macOS or Windows</li></ul>The Stack Electron Node.js TypeScript SQL & NoSQL The Environment Small team. World-class talent density. Fast decisions, collective ownership, and a relentless focus on shipping quality work. You'll need to bring structure, exercise judgment, and execute independently. Their goal: put something truly magical in the hands of their users. Process 3 to 4 interviews. Virtual and/or onsite. Transparent and fast. We encourage applicants from all backgrounds, so if there is anything we can do to make our recruitment processes better for you and to allow you to show your best self, let us know. We also understand that some people require extra time to complete assessments, require alternative application methods and can also benefit from having interview questions or a guide to the type of questions pre-interview. We are open to any suggestions or requests that you may have and are always looking for creative ways to assess talent. Our commitment to you is that you should always feel safe and secure when you’re working with us. Futureheads is a B Corp™ accredited digital recruitment agency based in London. We specialise in recruiting permanent, contract and freelance digital and tech professionals in creative, data, design, digital marketing, engineering, product, project and programme management, UX and service design jobs.

Senior Front End Developer

Mobile Engineer | iOS or Android (Remote - UK) <ul><li>Mobile Engineer | iOS or Android</li><li>AI Product | Early Stage Incubator</li><li>Remote First - London Office</li><li>Competitive, flexible salary dependent on experience</li></ul>We're partnering with an ambitious AI startup, a new spin off from a larger, successful global brand building a next-generation consumer product that combines intelligent automation, conversational AI and modern mobile experiences. Following continued global growth, they're looking to hire multiple Mobile Engineers, specialising in either iOS or Android to help shape the next generation of their mobile platform. This is a genuine opportunity to join a small, high-calibre engineering team where mobile isn't an afterthought, it's at the heart of the product. You'll work alongside backend and machine learning engineers to build AI-powered experiences used by real customers, helping define how intelligent software feels on modern mobile devices. If you enjoy solving challenging engineering problems, shipping polished products and working in an environment where you can influence technical direction, this is the sort of opportunity that's difficult to find. The Role You'll take ownership of native mobile features from design through to production, helping build applications that are fast, reliable and intuitive to use. You'll be involved in initiatives such as: <ul><li>Building and maintaining native mobile applications using either Swift or Kotlin</li><li>Delivering AI-powered features including conversational experiences, intelligent workflows and real-time interactions</li><li>Collaborating with backend and ML engineers to build scalable product features</li><li>Improving application performance, responsiveness and reliability</li><li>Designing resilient user experiences that handle latency, streaming responses and partial failures gracefully</li><li>Contributing to product decisions within a collaborative engineering team</li></ul>What You'll Bring <ul><li>Commercial experience developing native iOS or Android applications</li><li>Strong experience with Swift/SwiftUI or Kotlin</li><li>Experience shipping production mobile applications</li><li>Experience integrating backend APIs</li><li>A strong appreciation for performance, usability and product quality</li><li>Interest in AI-powered products and emerging technologies</li><li>Confidence working autonomously whilst collaborating closely with engineers across multiple disciplines</li><li>Experience with mobile machine learning, AI integrations or modern mobile architectures also beneficial</li></ul>If you're a Mobile Engineer looking to build AI-first products alongside an exceptional engineering team, we'd love to hear from you. Mobile Engineer | iOS or Android (Remote - UK) We encourage applicants from all backgrounds, so if there is anything we can do to make our recruitment processes better for you and to allow you to show your best self, let us know. We also understand that some people require extra time to complete assessments, require alternative application methods and can also benefit from having interview questions or a guide to the type of questions pre-interview. We are open to any suggestions or requests that you may have and are always looking for creative ways to assess talent. Our commitment to you is that you should always feel safe and secure when you’re working with us. Futureheads is a B Corp™ accredited digital recruitment agency based in London. We specialise in recruiting permanent, contract and freelance digital and tech professionals in creative, data, design, digital marketing, engineering, product, project and programme management, UX and service design jobs.

iOS Engineer

Our client is building AI systems that work in the real world. They need a Backend Engineer who owns the inference and orchestration layer that powers every AI interaction in the product. Your work sits between models and users, where latency, correctness, reliability, and cost directly impact real-world experience. The Role You will build and operate production systems that turn model capability into fast, stable, observable APIs used across mobile and desktop clients. What You'll Own<ul><li>Backend systems that serve AI-powered features in production</li><li>Inference pipelines, orchestration layers, and service boundaries around models</li><li>Production concerns: monitoring, logging, alerting, and incident response</li><li>Latency and throughput optimisation across inference, caching, batching, and streaming</li></ul>What They're Looking For<ul><li>Strong backend engineering fundamentals in production environments</li><li>Experience running high-throughput, low-latency services</li><li>Familiarity with AI inference patterns (LLMs, embeddings, multimodal)</li><li>Comfortable debugging distributed systems under load</li><li>Bias toward shipping and learning from production behaviour</li></ul>The Stack Python Node.js PyTorch OpenAI / Anthropic / OSS LLMs SQL & NoSQL Kubernetes Docker The Environment Small team. World-class talent density. Fast decisions, collective ownership, and a relentless focus on shipping quality work. You'll need to bring structure, exercise judgment, and execute independently. Their goal: put something truly magical in the hands of their users. Process 3 to 4 interviews. Virtual and/or onsite. Transparent and fast. We encourage applicants from all backgrounds, so if there is anything we can do to make our recruitment processes better for you and to allow you to show your best self, let us know. We also understand that some people require extra time to complete assessments, require alternative application methods and can also benefit from having interview questions or a guide to the type of questions pre-interview. We are open to any suggestions or requests that you may have and are always looking for creative ways to assess talent. Our commitment to you is that you should always feel safe and secure when you’re working with us. Futureheads is a B Corp™ accredited digital recruitment agency based in London. We specialise in recruiting permanent, contract and freelance digital and tech professionals in creative, data, design, digital marketing, engineering, product, project and programme management, UX and service design jobs.

Backend Engineer

Our client is building AI systems that work in the real world, not just in research. They need a Technical Lead who can own the application architecture that connects those AI capabilities to users across mobile and desktop. The Role This is a hands-on leadership position. You'll stay close to the code while setting the architectural direction for a small, senior engineering team. You own the layer between AI systems and real-world product experiences and you're accountable for making it fast, reliable, and coherent as it scales. What You'll Own<ul><li>Application engineering strategy across backend, mobile, and desktop</li><li>A small, senior team of backend, mobile, and desktop engineers</li><li>Architectural direction for AI-powered workflows, APIs, and client integrations</li><li>Production-grade reliability: observability, monitoring, retries, fallbacks, failure handling</li><li>Clear abstractions for AI integration with predictable, graceful behaviour</li><li>High-impact decisions across latency, cost, reliability, security, and UX</li><li>Execution culture: code reviews, design reviews, hands-on technical leadership</li><li>Partnership with ML leadership to turn model capability into shippable product</li></ul>What They're Looking For<ul><li>Significant experience leading application or product engineering for complex systems</li><li>Strong hands-on background shipping backend systems in production</li><li>Deep understanding of AI-powered product integration and its trade-offs</li><li>Excellent system design skills across services, APIs, clients, and data flows</li><li>Comfortable operating across platforms, even if your depth is in one</li><li>Proven ability to make high-impact technical decisions under ambiguity</li><li>A strong bias toward shipping, iteration, and learning from real-world usage</li></ul>The Environment Small team. World-class talent density. Fast decisions, collective ownership, and a relentless focus on shipping quality work. You'll need to bring structure, exercise judgment, and execute independently. Their goal: put something truly magical in the hands of their users. Process 3 to 4 interviews. Virtual and/or onsite. Transparent and fast. We encourage applicants from all backgrounds, so if there is anything we can do to make our recruitment processes better for you and to allow you to show your best self, let us know. We also understand that some people require extra time to complete assessments, require alternative application methods and can also benefit from having interview questions or a guide to the type of questions pre-interview. We are open to any suggestions or requests that you may have and are always looking for creative ways to assess talent. Our commitment to you is that you should always feel safe and secure when you’re working with us. Futureheads is a B Corp™ accredited digital recruitment agency based in London. We specialise in recruiting permanent, contract and freelance digital and tech professionals in creative, data, design, digital marketing, engineering, product, project and programme management, UX and service design jobs.

Technical Lead

Our Client is Looking for a Full Stack Engineer (AI Systems). Our client is a high-growth AI company building the infrastructure that makes AI actually work in production, not just in demos. They're looking for a Full Stack Engineer who can own the product layer that turns AI capabilities into reliable, real-world workflows. The Role This isn't a prompt-engineering job. You'll be building systems that plan, fail gracefully, recover, and deliver consistent value to users at scale. <ul><li>Ship end-to-end AI-native features across frontend, backend, and AI integrations</li><li>Design agent workflows that handle multi-step tasks, tool use, and failure recovery</li><li>Integrate LLMs, memory, and external tools into production-grade systems</li><li>Tackle streaming, latency, and partial results without sacrificing output quality</li><li>Build robust fallback and recovery mechanisms for when things go wrong</li><li>Iterate based on real usage and real failure modes</li></ul>What They're Looking For<ul><li>Strong full stack engineering across frontend and backend</li><li>Hands-on experience with LLMs, RAG systems, or AI-powered products</li><li>Sharp system design instincts and solid API architecture skills</li><li>High ownership,  someone who takes features from idea to production</li><li>Comfortable with ambiguity and fast-moving environments</li></ul>The Stack Next.js Python Node.js PyTorch OpenAI / Anthropic / OSS LLMs SQL & NoSQL Kubernetes Docker The Environment Small team. World-class talent density. They move fast, ship quality work, and make decisions collectively. You'll need to bring structure, exercise judgment, and execute independently. Their goal: put something truly magical in the hands of their users. Process 3–4 interviews. Virtual and/or onsite. Fast, transparent decisions. We encourage applicants from all backgrounds, so if there is anything we can do to make our recruitment processes better for you and to allow you to show your best self, let us know. We also understand that some people require extra time to complete assessments, require alternative application methods and can also benefit from having interview questions or a guide to the type of questions pre-interview. We are open to any suggestions or requests that you may have and are always looking for creative ways to assess talent. Our commitment to you is that you should always feel safe and secure when you’re working with us. Futureheads is a B Corp™ accredited digital recruitment agency based in London. We specialise in recruiting permanent, contract and freelance digital and tech professionals in creative, data, design, digital marketing, engineering, product, project and programme management, UX and service design jobs.

Full Stack Engineer (Ai Systems)

Mobile Engineer | iOS or Android (Remote - UK) <ul><li>Mobile Engineer | iOS or Android</li><li>AI Product | Early Stage Incubator</li><li>Remote First - London Office</li><li>Competitive, flexible salary dependent on experience</li></ul>We're partnering with an ambitious AI startup, a new spin off from a larger, successful global brand building a next-generation consumer product that combines intelligent automation, conversational AI and modern mobile experiences. Following continued global growth, they're looking to hire multiple Mobile Engineers, specialising in either iOS or Android to help shape the next generation of their mobile platform. This is a genuine opportunity to join a small, high-calibre engineering team where mobile isn't an afterthought, it's at the heart of the product. You'll work alongside backend and machine learning engineers to build AI-powered experiences used by real customers, helping define how intelligent software feels on modern mobile devices. If you enjoy solving challenging engineering problems, shipping polished products and working in an environment where you can influence technical direction, this is the sort of opportunity that's difficult to find. The Role You'll take ownership of native mobile features from design through to production, helping build applications that are fast, reliable and intuitive to use. You'll be involved in initiatives such as: <ul><li>Building and maintaining native mobile applications using either Swift or Kotlin</li><li>Delivering AI-powered features including conversational experiences, intelligent workflows and real-time interactions</li><li>Collaborating with backend and ML engineers to build scalable product features</li><li>Improving application performance, responsiveness and reliability</li><li>Designing resilient user experiences that handle latency, streaming responses and partial failures gracefully</li><li>Contributing to product decisions within a collaborative engineering team</li></ul>What You'll Bring <ul><li>Commercial experience developing native iOS or Android applications</li><li>Strong experience with Swift/SwiftUI or Kotlin</li><li>Experience shipping production mobile applications</li><li>Experience integrating backend APIs</li><li>A strong appreciation for performance, usability and product quality</li><li>Interest in AI-powered products and emerging technologies</li><li>Confidence working autonomously whilst collaborating closely with engineers across multiple disciplines</li><li>Experience with mobile machine learning, AI integrations or modern mobile architectures also beneficial</li></ul>If you're a Mobile Engineer looking to build AI-first products alongside an exceptional engineering team, we'd love to hear from you. Mobile Engineer | iOS or Android (Remote - UK) We encourage applicants from all backgrounds, so if there is anything we can do to make our recruitment processes better for you and to allow you to show your best self, let us know. We also understand that some people require extra time to complete assessments, require alternative application methods and can also benefit from having interview questions or a guide to the type of questions pre-interview. We are open to any suggestions or requests that you may have and are always looking for creative ways to assess talent. Our commitment to you is that you should always feel safe and secure when you’re working with us. Futureheads is a B Corp™ accredited digital recruitment agency based in London. We specialise in recruiting permanent, contract and freelance digital and tech professionals in creative, data, design, digital marketing, engineering, product, project and programme management, UX and service design jobs.

Android Engineer

Senior Data Engineer (Microsoft Fabric) | Contract 📍North East England (1 day onsite every fortnight) 💰 Up to £520 per day 🕒 Initial 3-month contract (Likely to extend) 🔐 BPSS Clearance Required 🚀 Immediate Start  We're working with a large organisation undergoing a significant data transformation programme and are looking for an experienced Senior Data Engineer to help build and optimise a modern data platform powered by Microsoft Fabric. This is an excellent opportunity to join a high-impact project where you'll combine hands-on engineering with technical leadership, helping to unlock valuable operational insights from enterprise data. The Role As a Senior Data Engineer, you'll be responsible for designing, building and optimising scalable data solutions using Microsoft Fabric, Azure and Power BI. You'll work closely with stakeholders across the organisation, integrating multiple business systems and ensuring data is accessible, trusted and ready for decision-making. Key Responsibilities<ul><li>Design and deliver data integration, transformation and visualisation solutions using Microsoft Fabric.</li><li>Build and optimise Bronze, Silver and Gold data pipelines.</li><li>Integrate CRM, contact centre and other line-of-business applications into modern data platforms.</li><li>Develop and optimise Lakehouse architectures and semantic models.</li><li>Create intuitive Power BI dashboards and reporting solutions.</li><li>Implement data quality, governance and matching processes.</li><li>Contribute to engineering standards, documentation and best practices.</li><li>Provide technical leadership and mentor less experienced team members.</li><li>Collaborate with technical and non-technical stakeholders to deliver business value.</li></ul>Essential Skills & Experience ✔ 7+ years' experience in Data Engineering ✔ Strong hands-on Microsoft Fabric expertise ✔ Deep Azure data engineering experience ✔ Exposure to AWS and cross-cloud integrations ✔ Experience integrating enterprise applications, CRM platforms and contact centre solutions ✔ Strong Power BI and data modelling capabilities ✔ Experience building and optimising scalable data pipelines ✔ Strong understanding of data quality and governance practices ✔ Experience mentoring engineers and providing technical leadership ✔ Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills What's on Offer?<ul><li>Up to £520 per day</li><li>Initial 3-month contract</li><li>Hybrid working model</li><li>Opportunity to work on a major data transformation programme</li><li>Immediate start available</li></ul>If you're a Senior Data Engineer with strong Microsoft Fabric expertise and experience delivering modern cloud data platforms, we'd love to hear from you. We encourage applicants from all backgrounds, so if there is anything we can do to make our recruitment processes better for you and to allow you to show your best self, let us know. We also understand that some people require extra time to complete assessments, require alternative application methods and can also benefit from having interview questions or a guide to the type of questions pre-interview. We are open to any suggestions or requests that you may have and are always looking for creative ways to assess talent. Our commitment to you is that you should always feel safe and secure when you’re working with us. Futureheads is a B Corp™ accredited digital recruitment agency based in London. We specialise in recruiting permanent, contract and freelance digital and tech professionals in creative, data, design, digital marketing, engineering, product, project and programme management, UX and service design jobs.

Senior Data Engineer (Microsoft Fabric)

Applied AI Engineer Location: London, UK (Hybrid) or Remote Employment Type: Full-Time Department: Engineering Applied AI Engineer About the Company The company is building an AI-native smart assistant designed to help everyday users manage conversations, tasks, organisation, and workflows with minimal prompting. The focus is on creating highly reliable AI systems capable of long-running workflows, persistent context, multi-step reasoning, and real-world task completion. The aim is to significantly reduce the time users spend completing daily tasks through intelligent automation. The Role As an Applied AI Engineer, you will be responsible for transforming AI model capabilities into real-world product functionality. You'll own problems end-to-end, working across machine learning, systems engineering, and product development to ensure AI solutions operate reliably in production environments. This role focuses on delivering AI products that work effectively for users at scale—not just in demonstrations. Key Responsibilities <ul><li>Build and deploy AI-powered features from model development through to user experience.</li><li>Design and improve prompts, tools, memory systems, and agent workflows.</li><li>Convert raw model outputs into structured, reliable behaviours.</li><li>Debug and resolve issues across the full stack, including models, orchestration, infrastructure, and user experience.</li><li>Optimise AI systems for latency, reliability, and cost efficiency.</li><li>Develop evaluation frameworks to measure real-world performance.</li><li>Collaborate closely with Product and Engineering teams to solve complex problems and deliver working solutions.</li></ul>Technology Stack <ul><li>Python</li><li>PyTorch</li><li>JAX</li><li>Large Language Models (OpenAI APIs, Llama, Qwen, etc.)</li><li>Inference and Serving Frameworks (e.g. vLLM)</li><li>Vector Databases</li></ul>Required Experience Technical Skills <ul><li>Strong knowledge of machine learning fundamentals and modern neural network architectures.</li><li>Experience training, fine-tuning, or deploying machine learning models.</li><li>Ability to write clean, maintainable, production-quality code.</li><li>Experience working across multiple layers of technology, from ML models to infrastructure and product delivery.</li></ul>Personal Attributes <ul><li>Strong problem-solving skills.</li><li>Comfortable working in fast-paced and ambiguous environments.</li><li>Ability to operate independently and take ownership.</li><li>Continuous improvement mindset with a focus on rapid iteration and delivery.</li></ul>Success Measures Successful candidates will: <ul><li>Deliver machine learning systems that meet accuracy, latency, and reliability targets.</li><li>Quickly identify and resolve production issues.</li><li>Build maintainable and reproducible training, inference, and data pipeline systems.</li><li>Collaborate effectively across Engineering, Product, and Research teams.</li><li>Drive measurable product improvements using real-world feedback and performance data.</li></ul>Working Environment The company believes exceptional products are built by small, high-performing teams. Team members are expected to: <ul><li>Work independently with minimal oversight.</li><li>Make sound decisions and exercise strong judgement.</li><li>Move quickly whilst maintaining high quality standards.</li><li>Balance execution with learning and experimentation.</li></ul>The mission is to build a transformative AI product capable of delivering meaningful value to billions of users. Interview Process <ul><li>Up to 3 interview stages.</li><li>Applications reviewed by the technical team.</li><li>Interviews conducted virtually and/or onsite.</li><li>Fast and transparent decision-making process.</li><li>Successful candidates will receive an offer to join the team and contribute to building next-generation AI products.</li></ul> We encourage applicants from all backgrounds, so if there is anything we can do to make our recruitment processes better for you and to allow you to show your best self, let us know. We also understand that some people require extra time to complete assessments, require alternative application methods and can also benefit from having interview questions or a guide to the type of questions pre-interview. We are open to any suggestions or requests that you may have and are always looking for creative ways to assess talent. Our commitment to you is that you should always feel safe and secure when you’re working with us. Futureheads is a B Corp™ accredited digital recruitment agency based in London. We specialise in recruiting permanent, contract and freelance digital and tech professionals in creative, data, design, digital marketing, engineering, product, project and programme management, UX and service design jobs.

Applied AI Engineer

Principal Machine Learning Engineer Location: London, UK (Hybrid) Employment Type: Full-Time Department: Engineering Principal Machine Learning Engineer About the Company The company is building an AI-native smart assistant designed to help everyday users manage conversations, tasks, organisation, and workflows with minimal prompting. The product focuses on creating reliable AI systems that can support long-running workflows, persistent context, multi-step reasoning, external tool interaction, and real-world task completion. The goal is to help users complete everyday tasks significantly faster through intelligent automation. The Role As a Principal Machine Learning Engineer, you will be responsible for turning research direction into production-grade machine learning systems. This role owns the execution layer of the company’s intelligence platform, covering training pipelines, inference systems, evaluation tooling, and deployment. You will work on building scalable, reliable ML infrastructure that can support real-world AI product experiences. Key Responsibilities <ul><li>Build and own end-to-end ML pipelines across data, training, evaluation, inference, and deployment.</li><li>Fine-tune and adapt models using modern techniques such as LoRA, QLoRA, SFT, DPO, and distillation.</li><li>Architect and operate scalable inference systems, balancing latency, cost, and reliability.</li><li>Design and maintain data systems for high-quality synthetic and real-world training data.</li><li>Build evaluation pipelines covering performance, robustness, safety, and bias in partnership with research leadership.</li><li>Own production deployment, including GPU optimisation, memory efficiency, latency reduction, and scaling policies.</li><li>Collaborate closely with application engineering teams to integrate ML systems into backend, mobile, and desktop products.</li><li>Make pragmatic trade-offs and ship improvements quickly based on real user feedback.</li><li>Work within real production constraints including latency, cost, reliability, and safety.</li></ul>Required Experience Technical Skills <ul><li>Strong background in deep learning and transformer-based architectures.</li><li>Hands-on experience training, fine-tuning, or deploying large-scale machine learning models in production.</li><li>Proficiency with at least one modern ML framework such as PyTorch or JAX.</li><li>Experience with distributed training and inference frameworks such as DeepSpeed, FSDP, Megatron, ZeRO, or Ray.</li><li>Strong software engineering fundamentals, with the ability to write robust, maintainable, production-grade systems.</li><li>Experience with GPU optimisation, including memory efficiency, quantisation, and mixed precision.</li></ul>Personal Attributes <ul><li>Comfortable owning ambiguous, zero-to-one ML systems end-to-end.</li><li>Strong bias toward shipping, learning quickly, and improving systems through iteration.</li><li>Able to exercise sound judgement and work independently in a fast-moving environment.</li></ul>Ideal Experience The ideal candidate may also bring experience in: <ul><li>LLM inference frameworks such as vLLM, TensorRT-LLM, or FasterTransformer.</li><li>Open-source contributions to machine learning or systems libraries.</li><li>Scientific computing, compilers, or GPU kernels.</li><li>RLHF pipelines including PPO, DPO, or ORPO.</li><li>Training or deploying multimodal or diffusion models.</li><li>Large-scale data processing tools such as Apache Arrow, Spark, or Ray.</li></ul>Working Environment The company believes the best products are built by small, world-class teams with high talent density. The team works collaboratively, moves quickly, and balances high-quality delivery with continuous learning. Team members are expected to bring structure, exercise judgement, and execute independently while contributing to a product designed to deliver practical AI benefits at global scale. We encourage applicants from all backgrounds, so if there is anything we can do to make our recruitment processes better for you and to allow you to show your best self, let us know. We also understand that some people require extra time to complete assessments, require alternative application methods and can also benefit from having interview questions or a guide to the type of questions pre-interview. We are open to any suggestions or requests that you may have and are always looking for creative ways to assess talent. Our commitment to you is that you should always feel safe and secure when you’re working with us. Futureheads is a B Corp™ accredited digital recruitment agency based in London. We specialise in recruiting permanent, contract and freelance digital and tech professionals in creative, data, design, digital marketing, engineering, product, project and programme management, UX and service design jobs.

Principal Machine Learning Engineer

Senior Machine Learning Engineer Location: London, UK (Hybrid) Or Remote from the UK  Employment Type: Full-Time Department: Engineering Senior Machine Learning Engineer About the Company The company is building an AI-native smart assistant designed to help everyday users manage conversations, tasks, organisation, and workflows with minimal prompting. The product focuses on creating reliable AI systems that can support long-running workflows, persistent context, multi-step reasoning, external tool interaction, and real-world task completion. The goal is to help users complete everyday tasks significantly faster through intelligent automation. The Role As a Senior Machine Learning Engineer, you will be an independent owner of critical machine learning subsystems in production. This is a hands-on, high-impact role where you will take ambiguous problems, design practical solutions, and ship systems that operate reliably at scale. The role is focused on technical depth, production quality, and delivering real user impact. Key Responsibilities <ul><li>Build core ML systems that power a proactive, long-horizon AI product.</li><li>Own work end-to-end across data preparation, training, evaluation, inference, and iteration.</li><li>Turn research ideas into production-ready systems that operate reliably at scale.</li><li>Debug model failures and system issues using real production signals.</li><li>Ship improvements quickly, measure outcomes, refine, and repeat.</li><li>Collaborate closely with research, product, and engineering teams to deliver real user impact.</li><li>Mentor and review work from other ML engineers through example and strong technical judgement.</li><li>Work within real production constraints including latency, cost, reliability, and safety.</li></ul>Technology Stack <ul><li>Python</li><li>PyTorch</li><li>JAX</li><li>GPU-based training and inference systems</li></ul>Ideal Experience Technical Skills <ul><li>Experience building and shipping machine learning systems used by real users.</li><li>Strong understanding of how modern ML models behave — and fail — in production environments.</li><li>Ability to write strong, production-quality code.</li><li>Systems-thinking mindset, with the ability to design maintainable and scalable solutions.</li></ul>Personal Attributes <ul><li>Strong ownership mindset.</li><li>Comfortable working independently and pushing work through to completion.</li><li>Fast learner with clear communication skills.</li><li>Bias toward iteration, measurement, and continuous improvement.</li><li>Able to bring structure and judgement to ambiguous technical problems.</li></ul>Success Measures Successful candidates will: <ul><li>Ensure ML models and production systems consistently meet accuracy, latency, reliability, and efficiency targets.</li><li>Monitor, debug, and resolve complex production issues with minimal disruption.</li><li>Build robust, scalable, and maintainable training, inference, and data pipelines.</li><li>Drive measurable improvements in ML systems using real-world signals and user feedback.</li><li>Provide mentorship and technical guidance to peers.</li><li>Help raise the overall ML engineering standard across the team.</li><li>Collaborate cross-functionally to ensure ML features integrate smoothly into products and meet business goals.</li></ul>Working Environment The company believes exceptional products are built by small, world-class teams with high talent density. The team is hands-on, collaborative, and moves quickly while balancing high-quality delivery with continuous learning. Team members are expected to bring structure, exercise sound judgement, and execute independently while contributing to a product designed to deliver practical AI benefits at global scale. We encourage applicants from all backgrounds, so if there is anything we can do to make our recruitment processes better for you and to allow you to show your best self, let us know. We also understand that some people require extra time to complete assessments, require alternative application methods and can also benefit from having interview questions or a guide to the type of questions pre-interview. We are open to any suggestions or requests that you may have and are always looking for creative ways to assess talent. Our commitment to you is that you should always feel safe and secure when you’re working with us. Futureheads is a B Corp™ accredited digital recruitment agency based in London. We specialise in recruiting permanent, contract and freelance digital and tech professionals in creative, data, design, digital marketing, engineering, product, project and programme management, UX and service design jobs.

Senior Machine Learning Engineer

Staff Machine Learning Engineer Location: London, UK (Hybrid) OR Remote Employment Type: Full-Time Department: Engineering   Staff Machine Learning Engineer About the Company The company is building an AI-native smart assistant designed to help everyday users manage conversations, tasks, organisation, and workflows with minimal prompting. The product is focused on delivering reliable AI systems capable of long-running workflows, persistent context, multi-step reasoning, and real-world task completion. The goal is to help users complete everyday tasks significantly faster through intelligent automation. The Role As a Staff Machine Learning Engineer (Technical Lead, Machine Learning), you will own the execution layer of the company's AI platform. Working at the intersection of research, infrastructure, and product, you'll be responsible for turning research direction into reliable, scalable, production-grade machine learning systems. You'll ensure models are trainable, deployable, observable, and performant in real-world environments. Key Responsibilities <ul><li>Own end-to-end ML system execution across data pipelines, training workflows, evaluation systems, inference architecture, and deployment.</li><li>Fine-tune and adapt models using advanced techniques such as LoRA, QLoRA, SFT, DPO, and distillation.</li><li>Architect and operate scalable inference systems while balancing latency, cost, and reliability.</li><li>Design and maintain data systems supporting both synthetic and real-world training data.</li><li>Build evaluation pipelines covering performance, safety, robustness, and bias.</li><li>Own production deployment, including GPU optimisation, memory efficiency, latency reduction, and scaling strategies.</li><li>Collaborate closely with application engineering teams to integrate ML systems into backend, mobile, and desktop products.</li><li>Make pragmatic trade-offs and deliver improvements rapidly based on real-world usage.</li><li>Work within production constraints including reliability, cost, latency, and safety.</li></ul>Technology Stack <ul><li>Python</li><li>PyTorch</li><li>JAX</li><li>GPU-based training and inference systems</li></ul>Ideal Experience Technical Skills <ul><li>Experience building and deploying real machine learning systems used by customers.</li><li>Strong understanding of large-scale machine learning models and their failure modes.</li><li>Ability to write robust, production-grade code.</li><li>Experience architecting scalable ML infrastructure and production systems.</li></ul>Leadership & Personal Attributes <ul><li>Technical leadership experience within ML teams.</li><li>Strong ownership mindset and accountability for outcomes.</li><li>Self-directed, pragmatic, and highly execution-focused.</li><li>Excellent communication and collaboration skills.</li><li>Comfortable operating in fast-moving, high-trust environments.</li></ul>Success Measures Successful candidates will: <ul><li>Translate research and modelling work into production-ready ML solutions with measurable performance targets.</li><li>Build stable, scalable, and maintainable ML pipelines, training systems, and inference infrastructure.</li><li>Rapidly detect, investigate, and resolve production issues.</li><li>Support and enable other ML engineers to deliver high-impact work efficiently.</li><li>Deliver measurable improvements in model performance, reliability, and user outcomes over time.</li><li>Balance innovation with operational excellence and system reliability.</li></ul>Working Environment The company believes exceptional products are built by small, world-class teams with high talent density. The culture values ownership, speed, collaboration, and continuous learning. Team members are expected to exercise judgement, execute independently, and contribute to building AI products capable of delivering meaningful impact at global scale. We encourage applicants from all backgrounds, so if there is anything we can do to make our recruitment processes better for you and to allow you to show your best self, let us know. We also understand that some people require extra time to complete assessments, require alternative application methods and can also benefit from having interview questions or a guide to the type of questions pre-interview. We are open to any suggestions or requests that you may have and are always looking for creative ways to assess talent. Our commitment to you is that you should always feel safe and secure when you’re working with us. Futureheads is a B Corp™ accredited digital recruitment agency based in London. We specialise in recruiting permanent, contract and freelance digital and tech professionals in creative, data, design, digital marketing, engineering, product, project and programme management, UX and service design jobs.

Staff Machine Learning Engineer

A growing technology business is hiring a Senior Backend Engineer to join its small, high-impact engineering team building an operating system for assets as a service. The platform supports banks and alternative investment managers with asset finance software, combining portfolio servicing and payment flows with IoT-driven tracking of clean assets. The role<ul><li>Lead with strong backend engineering expertise</li><li>Work across the stack where needed, with support from AI coding tools</li><li>Contribute to cloud/devops-aware product development</li><li>Help accelerate delivery in a lean team of 3 developers</li><li>Collaborate closely with a chatty, highly communicative startup team</li></ul>What they’re looking for<ul><li>Senior-level backend engineer, likely at the lower end of the senior spectrum</li><li>Comfortable working autonomously in a small team</li><li>Positive and practical attitude toward AI-assisted coding</li><li>Able to work end-to-end when needed, even if primarily backend-focused</li><li>Strong communicator with a collaborative, personable style</li><li>Motivated, ambitious, and excited by growth</li></ul>Useful background Experience in any of the following would be relevant: <ul><li>Fintech / asset finance / investment platforms</li><li>Payments or payment processing</li><li>IoT / telematics / clean tech / net zero tech</li><li>SaaS platforms in regulated or operationally complex environments</li></ul>Working style<ul><li>London office, 3 days per week: Monday, Wednesday, Thursday</li><li>Best suited to someone who genuinely enjoys in-person collaboration in a startup environment</li></ul>Why join<ul><li>Opportunity to have real impact in a small, growing team</li><li>Scope to grow into leadership responsibility as the business scales</li><li>Work on a product at the intersection of finance, infrastructure, clean assets, and AI-enabled engineering No sponsorship is available for this role</li></ul> We encourage applicants from all backgrounds, so if there is anything we can do to make our recruitment processes better for you and to allow you to show your best self, let us know. We also understand that some people require extra time to complete assessments, require alternative application methods and can also benefit from having interview questions or a guide to the type of questions pre-interview. We are open to any suggestions or requests that you may have and are always looking for creative ways to assess talent. Our commitment to you is that you should always feel safe and secure when you’re working with us. Futureheads is a B Corp™ accredited digital recruitment agency based in London. We specialise in recruiting permanent, contract and freelance digital and tech professionals in creative, data, design, digital marketing, engineering, product, project and programme management, UX and service design jobs.

Senior .Net Developer

Futureheads have partnered with a big player in the arts space. They are currently going through a migration to more of a modern site and need a Full Stack Developer to help them over an eight week period to do so. We are looking for someone who has strong expereince with:  • CMS: Headless Drupal • Frontend: Next.js (React, TypeScript) • Component documentation: Storybook • CDN: Cloudflare • Hosting: Heroku • Version control: GitHub • Sprint tools: Jira, Figma You'll be working alongside their in house dev team and closely with stakeholders who you'd demo to as well  Occasional travel into the London office will be required. £450 p/d outside of IR35Must be able to get into the office and have the right to work in the UK to be considered.  We encourage applicants from all backgrounds, so if there is anything we can do to make our recruitment processes better for you and to allow you to show your best self, let us know. We also understand that some people require extra time to complete assessments, require alternative application methods and can also benefit from having interview questions or a guide to the type of questions pre-interview. We are open to any suggestions or requests that you may have and are always looking for creative ways to assess talent. Our commitment to you is that you should always feel safe and secure when you’re working with us. Futureheads is a B Corp™ accredited digital recruitment agency based in London. We specialise in recruiting permanent, contract and freelance digital and tech professionals in creative, data, design, digital marketing, engineering, product, project and programme management, UX and service design jobs.

Full stack Developer (Next.js/Drupal)

The thought of a job interview can be nerve-wracking, particularly for those who haven&rsquo;t been in an interview situation for a long time, years perhaps. Here are our tips to help you feel prepared for the interview, and how to follow up when that fantastic job offer comes along.

Prepare to stand out at interview:&nbsp;Do your research! Check out your interviewers on Linkedin; get to know their background. You may have shared connections, or interests! Check out the product, be ready to give balanced feedback about what you like, and ideas for improvements. Prepare a list of questions; sometimes a great question is as good as a great answer. If you can ask them a question that really makes them think, challenges their assumptions or fuels further debate, they&rsquo;ll remember it!
Do your reading:&nbsp;Here are some of the most important technology developments around at the moment, so make sure you&rsquo;ve done your homework if the job is tech-related:
Healthcare: Data privacy and innovation within telemedicine&nbsp;Education: Adaptive content &amp; investment in online learning&nbsp;Fintech: strategic partnerships and marketplaces&nbsp;Insurance: AI for risk management &amp; case managementFollowing up after an interview:&nbsp;Sending a positive follow-up email can leave a great final impression on the hirer, but be mindful that the reader is likely to be time-poor so keep it brief. Thank them for their time and reaffirm your interest in the position. If something didn&rsquo;t go well, acknowledge it, and offer new suggestions having reflected on the question or task.
Negotiating salary following a job offer:&nbsp;You performed fantastically at the interview and they&rsquo;ve offered you the job, so now&rsquo;s the time to discuss salary which many can find tricky. Try and get an understanding of the salary on offer prior to communicating your expectations, give context around your thoughts and offer some level of benchmarking to show you know the industry. Communicate other motivations for joining the business as well as financial ones; employers want to hire candidates that are invested in their brand and product; while money is important, it shouldn&rsquo;t be the primary motivator.

Futureheads Top Tips series: Preparing for that interview and getting the job!

Mags Hanley is a career coach, mentor and trainer, based in Melbourne Australia. She has worked in UX for over 25 years in the US, UK and Australia. Her passion is to help UX professionals find into the roles that suits them best.
She works with primarily with senior practitioners moving into leadership, and senior women defining their role for the next phase of their lives. She has recently launched a new 8-week programme The Way Forward for senior women in digital.
You can connect with Mags on&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(255, 0, 25); background-color: transparent;" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/magshanley/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">LinkedIn</a>&nbsp;or read her latest blogs on her&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(255, 0, 25); background-color: transparent;" href="https://magshanley.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">website.</a>

<h2>What&rsquo;s the story of your career so far?</h2>
I started in digital when it was called Multi-Media. I fell into the work, having trained as a librarian and graduated in a recession &ndash; no grad positions for me!
My first role was at Yellow Pages in Australia as a Cybrarian &ndash; so 1990s. As we were all making it up, I asked if I could look after the search engine, because I knew how people searched &ndash; and my career as an IA started.
I&rsquo;ve lived and worked in the US and UK for 15 years, and have been back in Australia for 5 &frac12; years.
My career has been varied; an IA, project manager, product manager, Head of UX, Executive Producer, Consultant. The one I love the most is Career coach, Mentor and Trainer.
In the last year, I have developed a practice supporting senior practitioners move into leadership, and women in Design to thrive in their careers.
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<h2>What&rsquo;s the most important lesson you&rsquo;ve learnt over the course of your career?</h2>
Be authentic and true to yourself!
I love managing people and products, and seeing both grow, but I have struggled all of my career managing up. I&rsquo;ve improved over time, working relationships with the mostly male leadership, but this has been my greatest weakness.
To move into the higher levels of digital management I felt I wasn&rsquo;t myself; I had to be less emotional, female, and kind. I left my last job feeling disheartened, stressed and unconfident in my skills.
I saw Bren&eacute; Brown speak a week after leaving that job, and did the Value assessment. I realised I was not living my values of authenticity and kindness. So any new opportunity must match my values.
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<h2>How can organisations ensure they thrive, rather than simply survive, as they attempt to return to a &lsquo;new&rsquo; normal over the next few months?</h2>
There are a number of realisations for organisations:
<ol>
<li>The commute to the inner city office is wasted time &ndash; people love the extra time with their families.</li>
<li>Knowledge workers can be productive working from home. I&rsquo;ve had a number of bosses who have actively discouraged it, thinking we were skiving off.</li>
<li>Child care and flexibility is important to keep women in the workforce. The burden of looking after children intensified as women worked from home.</li>
</ol>
To thrive, organisations should look at what worked well &ndash; with their staff &ndash; and leverage it.
They should:
Plan for the majority of staff to work from home&nbsp;Reimagine work spaces as distributed hubs where people come in collaborate&nbsp;Find the best online tools for collaboration&nbsp;Provide support for their team&rsquo;s mental health&nbsp;Used the money saved from corporate office leases to include child care in their benefits packages&nbsp;
<h2>You&rsquo;ve recently written a blog about the challenges faced by women in UX and in particular by those women who are well into their careers &ndash; can you tell us more about that, and how women can really exploit the opportunities available to them in the digital workplace?</h2>
Many of my peers have been 20-25 years in digital; we are now considering what&rsquo;s next. How can we use our skills and experience in work that gives us joy?
Interface design is commoditised, creating pixel perfect prototypes; it&rsquo;s not the space we want to play in.
We do deep thinking, breaking apart problems and putting together solutions. My friend Tom Coates describes it as finding the nugget of truth that the rest of the model hangs off.
I am introducing the concept of Elder for women in Design; someone brings a depth of experience and wisdom to a role.
Elders don&rsquo;t have to be a Head or Director, they are Certain of their value and place; Grown and grounded in their skills and experience, and a Model by the way they behave, speak and write.
Once we know who and what we offer, we can then find those opportunities.
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<h2>What&rsquo;s going to be the biggest challenge in your particular industry over the next 12 months?</h2>
The biggest challenge for women in digital is learning how to blend all aspects of your life into the work you do. We need to find the right blend that gives us financial stability, life with our families, and joy in work.
With the ongoing instability of COVID pandemic changing the way we work, the next 12 months will be stressful. Women need to find their stable base for their lives, learning how to flex with working from home and the rest of life.
It&rsquo;s not about being a superwoman, but finding what new normal feels like and working with it. We have moved from pandemic crisis mode into living with the pandemic; therefore we need change our lives in response to it.
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Futureheads Five Stories – Margaret Hanley

Mark McDermott is the CEO of ScreenCloud, a global digital signage platform helping over 8,500 businesses communicate meaningful content using screens.
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He is also the co-founder of Codegent, an independent digital product studio based in London, UK and Bangkok, Thailand.
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Mark spoke to Futureheads as part of our FFS series, a regular interview series where business and industry leaders share their insights and personal experience. Other articles in the series can be found here.
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<h2>Tell us about the impact that Covid-19 and the lockdown measures have had on your business?</h2>
The world has changed and it&rsquo;s unlikely it will be the same again. It&rsquo;s been tough seeing some of our smaller customers who have been with us since we started ScreenCloud being so badly affected.
On the other hand, the demand for workforce communication tools that help separate what&rsquo;s important from the noise is more important than ever, and we&rsquo;ve pivoted to bring features like &ldquo;Company TV at home&rdquo; quickly to our customers, which have been very well received.
<h2>How have you adapted your operational and hiring practices?</h2>
Operationally we&rsquo;ve always worked at least partly remotely, but we have put new initiatives in place to help everyone feel more connected like regular All Hands sessions, &ldquo;ScreenCloud Radio&rdquo; and virtual fitness classes.
<h2>What are your top tips for successfully managing a remote recruitment process?</h2>
We&rsquo;ve not been recruiting during this period so I don&rsquo;t have much to add here, but it&rsquo;s interesting to read about the challenges and solutions that others have experienced.
<h2>Has this crisis made you look at your business differently or consider changes moving forwards?</h2>
It&rsquo;s actually helped to clarify our mission more, around helping workforces to communicate better to their employees using tools that curate and collect what&rsquo;s important, rather than just adding to the noise.
<h2>What advice would you give to anyone in a similar position to you at the moment?</h2>
Clear your mind. Do what you need to do. If you think &ldquo;what would happen if I fail?&rdquo; and you&nbsp;plant that seed in your mind, then you WILL fail. It&rsquo;s time to go back to basics.&nbsp;People don&rsquo;t want &lsquo;complicated&rsquo; in tough times, they want&nbsp;simple and relatable and a narrative that fits. If the focus of your narrative in boom time is about innovation and the future, reframe it for now;&nbsp;what innovation that you&rsquo;ve done to date is useful for today? You have to be instantly relevant.
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Futureheads Five Stories – Mark McDermott

Matt has 20 years experience starting and scaling business through digital media.
As the founder of marketing technology business&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(255, 0, 25); background-color: transparent;" href="https://www.driftrock.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Driftrock</a>, Matt helps brands like BMW, Honda and The University of Birmingham deliver marketing that people actually want to see, whilst protecting privacy.
Previously, as 3rd employee Matt helped Forward Internet Group scale to over &pound;100 million+ revenue and 500 staff. He also founded top mobile phone comparison site Omio, which merged with uSwitch in 2010 as well as co-founding Forward Labs helping test and grow startups.

<h2>1. In what shape has your business emerged from Covid-19?</h2>
With the new Covid-19 restrictions, we&rsquo;re very much still in the thick of things. We took a hit in April, but thankfully, changes we made have had an overall positive effect on the business and our clients. We&rsquo;ve recovered revenues and now enjoying some growth this quarter.
We feel very privileged with the global situation to be able to resume hiring again to expand our team.
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<h2>2. What are the most important and emerging skills to work in the new normal?</h2>
With the ever changing global landscape we&rsquo;ve taken time and researched how we build resilience and agility into our organisation (more on some of those changes below). One of our core principles has always been continuous improvement, but now more than ever, we need to constantly evaluate and adapt to changing circumstances.
Like lots of tech companies we made a decision to close our office, and migrate to becoming a fully remote organisation. This has had a huge knock-on effect on the way we work and the skills we need to thrive in the new normal.
After lots of research, the core skills we&rsquo;ve focused on are a results-driven culture and asynchronous working. As well as being critical skills for distributed teams, these changes have had a big impact on our productivity and focus &ndash; regardless of where we are working.
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<h2>3. What changes have you made in operations and hiring that are here to stay, and what will you lose?</h2>
Like many companies in 2020, we&rsquo;ve made more changes to the organisation than in any of our previous 7 years. For the results-driven focus we leveraged the&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(255, 0, 25); background-color: transparent;" href="https://www.eosworldwide.com/eos-model" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">EOS</a>&nbsp;framework and&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(255, 0, 25); background-color: transparent;" href="https://www.cio.com/article/3302036/okr-objectives-and-key-results-defined.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">OKRs.</a>&nbsp;This has influenced processes across everything we do from the product roadmap to HR processes. We&rsquo;ve made strides to work asynchronously using new collaboration tools and over-communicating where we can in everything we do.
We&rsquo;ve completely overhauled our hiring, onboarding and ongoing HR processes too in order to do things remotely. This mainly involved more deliberate, planned meetings and connections to integrate and improve relationships across the teams. Whereas previously things happened serendipitously, we&rsquo;ve found it important to work hard on these.
<h2>4. What has been your biggest key learning and how will this prepare you for the future?</h2>
Our biggest learning has been the benefits of focus and a shared vision across the business. Whilst it was important before, we&rsquo;ve seen first hand how being ruthlessly focused has improved our ability to deliver more value for our clients and the company.
It&rsquo;s resulted in some features being deprecated, huge improvements to our products and services, and new processes across the board that have been very positive.
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<h2>5. What has been the biggest surprise to you?</h2>
During the height of lockdown we onboarded two new teammates remotely, which was a daunting experience.
Thanks to some heroic work by Maryline, our Operations Manager and teammates who are always happy to jump in and help each other out, it&rsquo;s been a good experience overall.
One of our new teammates is having to shield, so we&rsquo;ve never met in person, yet we&rsquo;ve still managed to build bonds together. That said, we can&rsquo;t wait to meet up again as a team in person and celebrate!
To find out more about how Driftrock are helping clients generate more leads and grow their business through social advertising, visit their&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(255, 0, 25); background-color: transparent;" href="https://www.driftrock.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">site</a>&nbsp;or follow them on&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(255, 0, 25); background-color: transparent;" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/driftrock/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">LinkedIn.</a>

Futureheads Five Stories – Matt Wheeler

Matthew Bagwell is a fully qualified and practicing Advanced Oxygen Advantage&reg; Breathwork instructor, coaching across elite sports to people in need of specific support addressing physical and psychological conditions including depression and anxiety. He is also an endurance athlete, currently focused on ultra-distance running events.
Matt teaches people all over the world how to use their breath to improve physical and mental resilience, induce deep relaxation, overcome challenges including pandemic anxiety and unlock creative energy. His work is grounded in pragmatic scientific research and personal experience. As he says himself, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not woo woo, it&rsquo;s all science.&rdquo;
&nbsp;

1. What trends have you seen in peoples mental health over 2020?
The headline is increased anxiety. My classes have grown and grown as well as requests for one-to-one tuition &ndash; very often, it&rsquo;s relieving stress that is foremost in their minds. Sadly, I have also had more conversations with people developing early signs of both depression and fatalistic thinking. While this should come as no surprise &ndash; we are all under extraordinary circumstances &ndash; we need to pay attention to long-term wellbeing in LD2.
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2. What are the most important and emerging skills to work in the new normal?
From my perspective, it&rsquo;s about maintaining a balance and not developing new, less positive habits. We don&rsquo;t need to move to work or around the office. We can sit for hours and oftentimes, will be on our computers for hours longer than we would have been pre-pandemic. So we have to develop new healthy habits; take a regular screen break, don&rsquo;t eat and work, see the horizon every day, start work on time (not earlier) and end on time (not later) and spend time on exercise. The new skill here? Obsess about your wellbeing.
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3.&nbsp;If you could change one thing in peoples behaviour, in the new normal, to benefit their health and keep them on track professionally &ndash; what would it be?
To breathe consciously, inhaling and exhaling through the nose only, for ten minutes a day. People can join my free classes on @lovetolearnto to learn how to do this to optimise how they breathe. Changing breathing can help manage anxiety, improve sleep and positively affect how we think.
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4. What has been your biggest key learning and how will this prepare you for the future?
That I had taken personal contact with loved ones and travel for granted. As soon as I can do either (in a way that&rsquo;s sustainable for the planet), I&rsquo;m hugging everyone, everywhere!
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5. What has been the biggest surprise to you?
Great question. For me, just how resilient nature is. With Lockdown One, I was able to closely observe it and celebrate it &lsquo;bouncing back&rsquo;. I think so many people said the same thing, bird song, insects, boundless blackberries, clear skies. There&rsquo;s something to remember and take forward in this. I really hope we do.

Futureheads Five Stories – Matthew Bagwell

There are a huge number of reasons anyone could consider a career change at any given time, but particularly in a downturn this idea could prove more tempting. Here are the things to consider:

Get prepared &ndash;&nbsp;many jobs sound interesting in theory, but when you understand what they actually involve day-to-day you may be less convinced. Likewise you might start exploring something in more detail and find yourself drawn in, which suggests it could be a good avenue for the longer term. You can&rsquo;t guarantee a career change will instantly be right, but you can be proactive in your research and converse with people in the space to ensure you are making an informed decision that suits you.&nbsp;Understand your experience &ndash;&nbsp;once you have found a new career you are interested in pursuing, you need to know what skills you have that are transferable, or you can upskill in to make you relevant. Competing in a new field means you start at a disadvantage, but it does not mean your previous experience counts for nothing. Understand what can be substituted and if there is experience you lack, what can you do to close the gap.&nbsp;Think about skills for the long-term &ndash;&nbsp;Coaching is key, regardless of whether you want to line manage or not. It will help engage colleagues, stakeholders, clients positively in tricky situations and help build personal resilience &ndash; more important than ever to think about at the moment.&nbsp;Who can help &ndash;&nbsp;some career changes are easier than others, but with any change you make, having a few shortcuts to help you on your way is always useful. Whether it is friends, former colleagues or recruiters, companies will more likely take a chance on someone they know well, even if it was in a different capacity.&nbsp;
<h2>What key skills will be most valued by employers over the next 12 months?</h2>
Comfort with ambiguity&nbsp;Software &amp; data engineering&nbsp;Analytics &amp; data science&nbsp;Qualitative research to understanding rapidly changing consumer behaviours&nbsp;
<h2>How do you assess if a company is the right cultural fit for you?</h2>
There is no point making a career change to end up back where you started. So here are the things to look out for when assessing if a company is right for you:
Do they share your values?&nbsp;Each company has its own identity and set of values which govern how they operate. A good fit is often based on these being reflected in the individuals they hire themselves so use the interview process as a chance to assess this. Think about things like the communication style used, how they support employee growth, the work environment provided and how they handle conflict. These will give you a steer on whether you would be happy there.&nbsp;Read up.&nbsp;Check for any relevant news or information you can find on the business and what it is like to work there. Whilst all good and bad reviews need to be taken with some discretion, they are normally a good indicator of the truth and could help you validate any pros or cons.&nbsp;Evaluate the full picture.&nbsp;Everyone has their own tick list to work through. This may include things like the mission, progression, salary, location and much more. For most people there are a few things which cannot be compromised on and others which you are flexible on. If you find you are in a position where you are compromising too much then take some time to evaluate whether the company and fit is right for you.

Futureheads Top Tips series: Considering a career change

Our niche is technical experts who specialise in IT and digital projects, across multiple platforms and technology stacks. Come and talk to us about all things Engineering, from entry to CTO-Level.

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 Our niche is technical experts who specialise in IT and digital projects, across multiple platforms and technology stacks. Come and talk to us about all things Engineering, from entry to CTO-Level.
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 <h5>Our network includes professionals across:</h5>
 <ul>
 <li>Front-end</li>
 <li>​Back-end​</li>
 <li>​Full-stack​</li>
 <li>Native Mobile​​</li>
 <li>Cross-platform​​</li>
 <li>Technical Architecture​​</li>
 <li>Solution Architecture​​</li>
 <li>DevOps / SRE / Platform Engineering</li>
 <li>Testing & QA</li>
 <li>Engineering Managers</li>
 <li>Head of Engineering</li>
 <li>CTO</li>
 </ul>
 </div>
</div>

Engineering

With positions across agencies, brands, start-ups and tech companies, we work with Creatives delivering new brands, campaigns and integrated experiences. From hiring freelance Creative Teams to your first in-house Copywriter, we’ve got it covered. 

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 With positions across agencies, brands, start-ups and tech companies, we work with Creatives delivering new brands, campaigns and integrated experiences. From hiring freelance Creative Teams to your first in-house Copywriter, we’ve got it covered.
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 <h5>Our network includes professionals in:</h5> 
 <ul>
 <li>Motion Graphics & Video Editing</li>
 <li>Branding</li>
 <li>Copywriting</li>
 <li>Art Direction</li>
 <li>Illustration</li>
 <li>Digital Design</li>
 <li>Marketing Design</li>
 </ul>
 </div>
</div>

Creative

We partner with organisations to identify and deliver security professionals who can safeguard environments, manage risk and build resilient security strategies.

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 As cyber threats continue to evolve in scale and sophistication, organisations face increasing pressure to protect their systems, data and people. Securing the right cyber security talent across GRC, security operations, and cloud and application security is critical. We partner with organisations to identify and deliver security professionals who can safeguard environments, manage risk and build resilient security strategies.
 </div>
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 <h5>Our network includes professionals in:</h5>
 <ul>
 <li>Cyber Security Analyst (Entry to Senior)</li>
 <li>SOC Analyst (Tier 1–3)</li>
 <li>GRC Analyst / Consultant</li>
 <li>Security Engineer (Cloud, Application, DevSecOps)</li>
 <li>Penetration Tester / Ethical Hacker</li>
 <li>Incident Response and Threat Intelligence Analyst</li>
 <li>Security Architect</li>
 <li>Cyber Security Manager</li>
 <li>Head of Information Security / CISO</li>
 </ul>
 </div>
</div>

Cybersecurity

Navigating the complexities of AI, machine learning, and data integrity presents a growing challenge for businesses, especially when it comes to hiring professionals with the right blend of compliance, system integration and advanced analytics expertise. That’s where we come in. 

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 Navigating the complexities of AI, machine learning, and data integrity presents a growing challenge for businesses, especially when it comes to hiring professionals with the right blend of compliance, system integration and advanced analytics expertise. That’s where we come in.
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 <h5>Our network of data professionals includes experts in:</h5>
 <ul>
 <li>Data Engineering</li>
 <li>Data Science</li>
 <li>​Data Analytics</li>
 <li>​Machine Learning</li>
 <li>AI Research and Development</li>
 <li>​ML Ops</li>
 <li>​Data Governance</li>
 <li>Head of Data</li>
 <li>CDO</li>
 </ul>
 </div>
</div>

Data & AI

We know that the world of Digital Marketing moves at a fast pace. That’s why our teams are on hand to support, and always ahead of the curve.

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 We know that the world of Digital Marketing moves at a fast pace. That’s why our teams are on hand to support, and always ahead of the curve.
 </div>
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 <h5>Our network includes professionals in:</h5>
 <ul>
 <li>Multidisciplinary Marketing Management</li>
 <li>Product Marketing</li>
 <li>Growth Marketing</li>
 <li>Performance Marketing</li>
 <li>CRM</li>
 <li>Social Media</li>
 <li>Marketing Ops</li>
 <li>Affiliate Marketing</li>
 </ul>
 </div>
</div>

Marketing & Sales

From recruiting your first Product Owner to hiring your next experienced Product Managers, our recruiters have developed a specialist Product network in the design and tech space. They are trusted experts in sourcing and delivering both permanent and contract professionals in the field.

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 From recruiting your first Product Owner to hiring your next experienced Product Managers, our recruiters have developed a specialist Product network in the design and tech space. They are trusted experts in sourcing and delivering both permanent and contract professionals in the field.
 </div>
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 <h5>Our network includes:</h5>
 <ul>
 <li>Chief Product Officers (CPO)</li>
 <li>VPs of Product Management​</li>
 <li>Directors of Product Management</li>
 <li>Product Managers​​</li>
 <li>Product Owners</li>
 </ul>
 </div>
</div>

Product

Part of our founding offering; since 2009 we have been part of the growth and evolution of the Design market in the UK. With a comprehensive network across all major skills-sets we have consistently helped businesses hire world-class Design talent. 

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 Part of our founding offering; since 2009 we have been part of the growth and evolution of the Design market in the UK. With a comprehensive network across all major skills-sets we have consistently helped businesses hire world-class Design talent.
 </div>
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 <h5> Our network includes Designers with skills in:</h5>
 <ul>
 <li>Digital Product (UX/UI) Design</li>
 <li>User Interface (UI) Design</li>
 <li>​Visual Design</li>
 
 </ul>
 </div>
</div>

Product Design

With a deep understanding of what is required from Project Managers and Programme Managers in the digital and tech space, we can help you find the talent to deliver better budget controls, communication and reporting as well as ways to introduce new processes, tools and technology to optimise efficiency. 

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 With a deep understanding of what is required from Project Managers and Programme Managers in the digital and tech space, we can help you find the talent to deliver better budget controls, communication and reporting as well as ways to introduce new processes, tools and technology to optimise efficiency.
 </div>
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 <h5>Our network includes:</h5>
 <ul>
 <li>Digital & Technical Project Managers</li>
 <li>Programme Managers</li>
 <li>Delivery Managers</li>
 <li>Business Analysts</li>
 <li>Scrum Masters</li>
 </ul>
 </div>
</div>

Projects & Delivery

From helping shape the London UX market in its early days, to running and sponsoring some of the best-known UX networking events in the UK, we're highly regarded for our breadth and depth of expertise in this space and for our ability to match top-tier UX practitioners into brilliant opportunities. 

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 From helping shape the London UX market in its early days, to running and sponsoring some of the most well-known UX networking events in the UK, we're highly regarded for our breadth and depth of expertise in this space and for our ability to match top-tier UX practitioners into brilliant opportunities.
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 <h5>Our network includes practitioners with skills across:</h5>
 <ul>
 <li>User Research</li>
 <li>UX & Interaction Design​</li>
 <li>​Service Design​</li>
 <li>Content Design</li>
 </ul>
 </div>
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UX & Service Design

Rohan Maheswaran

As Co-MD, Rohan ensures the client experience is best-in-class and coaches customers and internal teams on building and executing successful recruitment and growth strategies.
Rohan is an industry high performer with a deep understanding of technology, and how the product life cycle and the individuals who contribute to it, impact a company&rsquo;s reach. His track record and building of genuine, trusted relationships enables him to advise on the right solutions without compromising the values.
When Rohan isn't working, he is travelling around the world &ndash; Japan, South Africa and Sri Lanka are recent faves - and enjoys exploring new foods along the way. He is also an avid sports fan (both playing and watching), and is a regular at the gym and swimming pool.&nbsp;

Joe Parry

As an end to end JavaScript recruiter working alongside start ups, scaleups and VCs, Joe brings experience in hiring full stack, front and backend developers (web/mobile) into businesses from pre-seed stage onwards. There's nothing he enjoys more than helping candidates find their ideal role, and helping clients secure their ideal hire.&nbsp;
Outside of work, Joe is a big fan of food and travel. Sardinia has been a recent highlight and he often goes to the Basque country to enjoy its culinary delights.&nbsp;

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