AI engineer for the Danish Defence's AI Center

Can you explain attention on a napkin, train a transformer from the ground up, and build the evals that reveal whether it actually works? And will you use your skills on something that really matters? Then we have a mission, access to Denmark's national AI supercomputer, and a place for you, whether you just handed in your thesis or have some years under your belt.

About us

AI is already changing the frameworks for society, security policy, and military task execution. The future battlefield will increasingly be characterized by data, autonomy, and faster decision processes. The Danish Defence AI Center (FAIC) is established as a new unit in the Defence Command to ensure that AI is translated into real Danish and allied defence capability.

FAIC sets the direction for the Defence's use of AI - from doctrine to operational reality. We are building institutional competence, entering partnerships with NATO, allies, academia, and industry, and defining the operational needs and principles that Defence AI solutions are developed and procured from - in close collaboration with the Danish Defence Acquisition and Logistics Organization (FMI), so procurements and deliveries are grounded in soldiers' needs and the Defence's core mission.

Our collaboration with Gefion, Denmark's national AI supercomputer, demonstrates the working mode: open environments enable learning and tempo, while closed environments ensure military applicability where security, classification, and operational relevance are crucial.

FAIC is the place where the Defence's AI future is shaped. We seek experienced profiles who want to join from day one.

About the position

As an AI Engineer in the Defence AI Center you will work on developing, adapting, and evaluating AI models for the Defence's operational needs. You will train and fine-tune models on Gefion and work with everything from transformer architectures, attention mechanisms, and optimization to evaluation of models' precision, robustness, and safety. You will develop the tools, evaluation methods, and safety mechanisms that make it possible to assess whether a model is ready for operational use.

At the same time you will build data pipelines, testing tools, and software integrations and collaborate closely with developers, platform engineers, and operational users to translate research into solutions that work in practice.

You will become part of an interdisciplinary environment with a steep learning curve, where both recent graduates and experienced individuals can develop professionally and contribute with their competencies.

The role is for you if you are curious about the latest AI research, motivated to understand why models behave the way they do, and want to use your technical knowledge to strengthen the Defence's mission.

Your main tasks

Model development and training

You will train, fine-tune, and adapt AI models for Defence tasks and data, including language models, multimodal models, and models for sensor and image data. You will experiment with transformer architectures, attention mechanisms and other efficient model structures, and apply methods such as supervised fine-tuning, preference optimization, and reinforcement learning to shape model behavior. On Gefion and the AI Center's other GPU resources you will optimize training runs with a focus on efficiency and stability.

You will also build and quality-check training and evaluation data, including synthetic data, with focus on quality, traceability, and classification.

Evaluations, guardrails, and trust

You will develop evaluation methods and benchmarks that measure models' precision, robustness, and reliability in relevant operational scenarios. You will implement guardrails that support safe and predictable model behavior, also against prompt injection and other adversarial attacks. Through red teaming and fault analysis you identify weaknesses and document results so there is a solid basis for assessing whether models are ready for use. You will also contribute to explainability and responsible use of AI in accordance with Defence and NATO principles.

Inference and deployment

You will develop inference harnesses and evaluation pipelines that enable testing, comparing, and validating models systematically and reproductibly. You will optimize models for practical use through, among other things, quantization, distillation, and efficient serving, so they can run on limited hardware and in isolated environments. In collaboration with developers and platform engineers you contribute to safely bringing models from development to classified operational environments under the principle develop low, deploy high .

Interdisciplinarity and breadth

You will develop components, services, and tools that support model development, including data ingestion, APIs, integrations, and user interfaces for testing and demonstration. You will maintain data pipelines and test data that make the development process more efficient and reliable, and collaborate with developers, platform engineers, data specialists, and operational users to take solutions from idea to use. You take responsibility for the tasks to be solved along the way, continuously acquire new competencies, and share your knowledge with the team.

Research and collaboration

You follow international AI research and translate relevant results into concrete solutions for the Defence. Based on mathematical modelling, statistics, and optimization you explore complex problems and assess which models and methods best solve the task. You collaborate with research environments, industry, NATO, and allies on model development and knowledge exchange. In addition you prepare technical analyses and recommendations that support the Defence's decisions, and contribute to building the organization's AI competencies through knowledge sharing, professional sparring, and mentoring.

We offer a job with a mission: You help the Defence to adopt AI, gain access to Denmark's national AI supercomputer, work on problems you won't find elsewhere, and become part of a team where new graduates and experienced colleagues learn from each other and build the Defence's own AI capability from the ground up.

About you

You have a master's or PhD in machine learning, computer science, mathematics, physics, statistics, or a corresponding quantitative field. You are recent graduate or have experience from research or practice where you have worked on training and fine-tuning deep learning models – preferably language models or other transformer-based models.

You have a solid understanding of transformer architectures, attention mechanisms, and the mathematics behind modern deep learning, including linear algebra, probability, and optimization. You also have experience with model evaluation, inference harnesses, and guardrails and approach benchmarks critically regarding what they truly measure. You are strong in Python and PyTorch or similar frameworks and write code that is reproducible and usable by others.

You thrive in a cross-disciplinary environment and are keen to work broadly with AI – including tasks around the models, such as component development, data handling, and integrations. You are motivated by a clear mission and want to use your technical competencies to strengthen Denmark's and NATO's defence. You are fluent in both Danish and English in a professional context.

It is an advantage, but not a requirement, if you also have experience in one or more of the following areas:

• Distributed training: Training on GPU clusters with e.g. Slurm, FSDP, DeepSpeed or Megatron.
• Model optimization: Preference optimization and reinforcement learning, e.g. DPO or RLHF.
• Efficient inference: Quantization, distillation, or tools such as vLLM, TensorRT, and CUDA.
• AI safety: Mechanistic interpretability, red teaming, or other methods to explore and improve model safety.
• Multimodal models: Models for sensor, image, or geodata.
• Research and open source: Publishing research or contributions to open source projects in machine learning.
• Defense and authorities: Experience from defence, intelligence, or authority contexts, including work in classified environments.

Employment terms

The appointment is made in accordance with the current agreement between the Ministry of Finance and a number of academic organizations for academics in the state (Academic Agreement).

Qualification and functional supplements are negotiated based on relevant experience and competencies. In addition, there is an employer-funded pension scheme linked to the position.

The workplace is in Lyngby

As an employee within the Ministry of Defence's domain you are subject to some special terms. You must, among other things, be security cleared and maintain the clearance throughout the employment.

You are obligated as an employee to serve outside the country, including at units in international operations with a view to participation in conflict-prevention, peacekeeping, peacebuilding, humanitarian and other similar operations.

Contact and application

If you would like to hear more about the position, you are welcome to contact Rasmus Kilmose at phone 2262 8836.

If you have questions about salary and employment terms, you are welcome to contact the Personnel Command, HR consultant Madeleine Moltke Kæmsgaard at phone 4031 1094.

The application deadline is 30 November 2026 and interviews will be held on a rolling basis. The position is available as soon as possible after agreement.

You apply for the position via the link, and we ask you to attach your application, CV and copies of your educational certificates. Please note that attachments must be added in PDF format.

In the Ministry of Defence's organization we believe that diversity optimizes task solving. Therefore we encourage all interested applicants regardless of background to apply.

About the Defence AI Center

AI is redefining both the battlefield and the way the Defence creates and uses combat power. AI shortens the path from observation to decision and effect and opens up task solutions that were not previously possible. AI is not something that merely supports the Defence's operations — AI helps define them. That is why AI has a central role in the Defence, and that is why the Defence AI Center (FAIC) is established as a new unit in the Defence Command.

FAIC sets the direction for how the Defence uses AI, so investments translate into real Danish and allied defence capability. We prioritise operational needs across services and commands in close dialogue with operators, and we build partnerships with NATO, allies, academia, and industry. Our task is to ensure that AI becomes combat power — not technology for technology's sake.

We work AI-first and innovatively enough to change us as reality changes. That means short cycles, close to the operator, and speed and learning as operational requirements. We develop in open environments to gain pace and insight, and we take solutions into operation in classified environments where security and operational relevance are crucial. We have access to some of the Nordic region's best computers, and our infrastructure is built so that AI is part of the solution from the start.

The Defence AI Center is the place where the Defence's AI future is shaped.

Application deadline: 30 November 2026

Department: Holmens Kanal 9 1060 København K

Location: Greater Copenhagen area