Forward-Deployed AI Engineer

About the role

Tekever is hiring a Forward-Deployed AI Engineer in Caldas da Rainha to bring data engineering, data analytics, data science and machine learning expertise directly into its UAV platform team. You will sit with the engineers and operators who design, test and fly the aircraft, turn their problems into working data and AI solutions, and act as the bridge between the platform team and the Data & AI department. The role is AI-first, using AI-assisted development tools to prototype quickly.

Key responsibilities

• Analyse flight logs, telemetry and mission data to answer engineering questions such as flight performance, anomaly detection and post-flight review.
• Build, evaluate and iterate machine learning models, from quick baselines to production candidates, with the Data & AI teams.
• Help make the team's data easy to collect, find and trust: ingest logs and video, ensure consistent mission identifiers and document queryable datasets.
• Design and maintain internal tools: scripts, CLIs, small web apps, dashboards and automations.
• Use AI-assisted development workflows to go from problem to working prototype in days, then test with users and iterate.
• Integrate with mission and ground control software and onboard and ground data flows, and support ground and flight tests when needed.
• Act as the day-to-day contact for Data & AI, translating needs into scoped requirements and helping the team adopt their products.
• Document analyses, tools and data flows, and work within the team's agile rituals, keeping work visible in Jira and Confluence.

Required profile

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Aerospace or Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
• 3+ years of hands-on experience delivering data, analytics or ML solutions end to end, ideally with direct contact with end users.
• Fluent Portuguese and English; lives in or near Caldas da Rainha or willing to relocate, and available to work on-site.
• Interest in aviation, UAVs or robotics; experience with flight data, telemetry, ground control software or autopilots is a strong plus.

Required skills

• Strong SQL and Python (pandas/Polars, NumPy, Jupyter); good Python, with C#, C++ or TypeScript/JavaScript a plus.
• Training, evaluating and iterating ML models (scikit-learn, PyTorch).
• Building internal tools: scripts, CLIs, dashboards or simple web apps (Streamlit, Dash, React), REST APIs.
• Git, Linux, Docker and basic CI/CD.
• Hands-on experience with AI coding assistants (Claude, Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot) to prototype and ship quickly.
• Bonus: cloud platforms (AWS, Azure), data lakehouses or Trino, computer vision, geospatial data, time-series modelling.