Automation R&I Lead — Hybrid, Global

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We’re so much more than an energy company. We’re a family of brands revolutionising how we power the planet. We're energisers. One team of 21,000 colleagues that's energising a greener, fairer future by creating an energy system that doesn’t rely on fossil fuels, whilst living our powerful commitment to igniting positive change in our communities. Here, you can find more purpose, more passion, and more potential.

That’s why working here is #MoreThanACareer. We do energy differently - we do it all. We make it, store it, move it, sell it, and mend it.

R&I Manager (Automation)

Want to help the world move towards Net Zero and shape the future of energy from within the UK’s leading energy providers?

Energised Futures is Centrica's in-house science, research and innovation incubator,established to systematically explore the possible and catalyse

Centrica’s purpose ofenergisinga greener, fairer future. To do this, we’ve built a dynamic and diverse team of researchers to perform cutting edge innovation across its core themes of flexibility, automation, connectivity, markets, engagement, and access, and pairing this with a strong support team to publish and promote research activities, engage with other research institutions and energy innovators, and grow our portfolio of activities.

Based in Antwerp and London since 2024, we continue to grow and evolve, giving newcomers tothe team the chance to play a pivotal role in shaping the team and its processes, as it in turn shapes the roadmap for the widerorganisationand industry.

The Role:

Our Research and Innovation Managers lead and mentor teams of research professionals, oversee highly technical projects, and own the strategy and roadmap for their area, ensuring alignment with the company's strategic objectives. The Automation theme covers all methods and technology that bringdigitisationand optimisation of energy to scale using complex algorithms based on data science, machine learning, and the full spectrum of AI techniques (e.g.generative, agentic,etc).

Specifically, the role entails:

• Leading and developing a teamof research engineers

• Ensuring reliable deliveryofhigh-qualityresearchand innovation outputs

• Owningthe Energised Futures ’ strategy around the automation pillar

• Collaboratingandengaging with stakeholders, both across Centrica, the energy industry,startup sand academia

• Supporting the wider business to adopt and deploy our outputs tomaximiseour impact

• Monitor and engage with industry and academia by engaging with conferences and journals

The team is currently based in Antwerp, Belgium but we will be building a London-centred team to match. It will be useful to be able to travel between the locations, butwe’dprefer you to be based in or around London.

The ideal candidate:

An adaptable, experienced data scientist or machine learning expert that wants to tackle complex challenges and push the state of the art for automation in the energy sector.

Of course,we’realso adaptable – if you thinkyou’dbe a good fit butdon’thave all of this thenwe’dstill love to hear from you!

Key skills and experiences

• 5+years experience designing complex statistical algorithms or machine learning models:A PhD plus 2 or more years or a master’s degree plus 4 or more years of research or equivalent industry experience in a domain such as Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Control Systems, or a related field

• Experience across a spectrum of libraries,framework sand services
  :such asML librariese.g.Tensor Flowor Py Torch ;model servers such asAWS Bedrock;
  
  MLOpssuch as ML Flow or Sagemaker; agent / AI orchestration such asLangGraphor MCP libraries

• Strong programming skills, especially in Python
  (other languages like C++, Scala, Rustetcarebonuses).Practical experience implementing and deploying using various techniques including for (deep) supervised / unsupervised / reinforcement learning problems

• Strong mathematical skills and analyticalmindeset

• Energyindustryknowledgeisstronglypreferred
  e.g.smart energy technologies and energy management, and connectivity challenges, energy markets and trading techniques, regulatoryconstraintsand processes, etc

And keybehavioursand competences

• Anada…