Senior/Lead Research Engineer

[What the role is] Most Positive Workplace Collaboration Award – Singapore International Chamber of Commerce (SICC) Awards 2025 Ranked #19 for The Straits Times Singapore’s Best Employers 2024 & 2025 The Centre of Excellence in Maritime Safety (CEMS) is a national R&D centre, a collaborative effort between Singapore Polytechnic and the Singapore Maritime Institute. We focus on developing innovative digital solutions and training systems to enhance maritime safety. Our state-of-the-art research facilities, including South-east Asia's first navigation research simulator, setting us as an innovation champion. You will join CEMS as a Senior AI Engineer/Lead and play a key role in developing applied AI solutions for real-world use cases across training, assessment, operations, research, and digital transformation. The role requires strong hands-on experience in computer vision and/or speech recognition, with the ability to design, develop, evaluate, and deploy AI models. You will work on centre-level AI projects and may also contribute to department- and school-level AI initiatives involving broader AI adoption across R&D, operations, and education. As a senior member of the team, you will also supervise and guide AI engineers, support project planning, and ensure technical delivery across multiple AI workstreams. [What you will be working on] Responsibilities • Design, develop, and implement AI models and pipelines for real-world applications in training, assessment, safety, operations, and decision-support. • Develop AI solutions involving video analytics, object detection, image classification, visual attention analysis, speech-to-text, audio processing, communication analysis, and related applied AI tasks. • Work with data from video, audio, sensors, simulators, operational systems, and other sources to develop AI-enabled analytics and assessment capabilities. • Integrate AI models with software platforms, dashboards, simulators, sensor systems, training platforms, or decision-support tools to support practical deployment and operational use. • Explore, evaluate, and prototype suitable AI techniques, including deep learning, sequence models, multimodal learning, natural language processing, and large language model applications where relevant. • Lead AI components within R&D projects, manage technical milestones, prepare documentation, and ensure timely delivery of project outputs. • Supervise and mentor AI engineers or junior team members, review technical approaches, guide model development, and support capability building within the AI team. • Work with internal teams, academic staff, industry partners, and external stakeholders to co-develop AI solutions and apply AI capabilities across centre-, department-, and school-level initiatives. • Present AI approaches, findings, prototypes, and project outcomes to management, project partners, and industry collaborators in a clear and practical manner. [What we are looking for] Qualifications • Tertiary Qualification in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Engineering, Data Science, or a related field. • Strong hands-on experience in computer vision and/or speech recognition, including model development, training, evaluation, and deployment. Relevant technical experience may include video analytics, object detection, image classification, pose or behaviour recognition, visual attention analysis, speech-to-text, audio processing, speaker or communication analysis, natural language processing, or multimodal AI involving video, audio, sensor, simulator, or time-series data. • Proficiency in Python and experience with AI/ML frameworks and toolkits such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, OpenCV, Hugging Face, or equivalent. • Strong understanding of machine learning and deep learning model development, including data preparation, model training, evaluation, optimisation, and performance validation. • Experience integrating AI models into software systems, dashboards, simulators, training platforms, or operational applications is preferred. • Experience with Large Language Models (LLMs) is an added advantage, particularly in applications beyond standard chatbot or document Q&A systems, such as multimodal AI, speech/video understanding, automated assessment, structured information extraction, model evaluation, fine-tuning, or integration with operational software systems. • Experience leading AI workstreams, supervising technical staff, or mentoring junior engineers is preferred. • Strong problem-solving ability, project execution skills, communication skills, and ability to work with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.