# Category 07 — Pure Remote · International Employers Hiring UK-Based > Fully remote roles · international AI labs hiring UK-resident engineers · async-first tech consultancies · open-source-funded engineering ## Summary For a Leeds-based Staff-level engineer with a strong open-weights / agentic / kernel-Linux profile, **pure remote** dramatically widens the field beyond the geographic clusters mapped in categories 01–06. This writeup covers (a) **UK-domiciled remote-first** employers, (b) **EU and US companies that hire UK residents directly** (with a UK entity or via Deel/Remote.com / EOR arrangements), and (c) **open-source / foundation-funded** engineering routes that are remote by default. The realistic April 2026 picture: there are **~1,500–3,000 fully-remote UK-eligible engineering roles** at any time across LinkedIn, Wellfound, AIJobs.net, Working Nomads, RemoteRocketship, NoDesk, and Hacker News "Who is hiring" — but many "remote UK" listings are actually hybrid-with-occasional-office, so filter carefully. Salaries on US-headquartered roles for senior IC engineers run ~$140–250k base, well above UK norms. --- ## A. UK-domiciled remote-first employers | Employer | What they do | Stack | Hiring? | |---|---|---|---| | **Canonical** | Ubuntu, Ubuntu Core, snapd, IoT, MAAS, OpenStack | Python, Go, C, Linux kernel, OPTEE | Yes — multiple "Embedded Linux Engineer", "Kernel Engineer", "AI/ML Platform Engineer" | | **Collabora** | Upstream Linux kernel, Mesa, GStreamer, Wayland, Panfrost | C, kernel, graphics | Yes — UK-remote kernel + graphics roles | | **Foundries.io** | LmP (Linux microPlatform) for IoT, OTA, Zephyr | Yocto, Zephyr, OTA | Yes — "Linux Platform Engineer" UK-remote | | **Witekio** (Avnet) | Linux/Android BSP consultancy | Yocto, BSPs, Android | Yes — UK-remote | | **Igalia** | Browser, kernel, compiler open-source consultancy | Chromium, WebKit, kernel | Selective — UK-remote possible | | **Hugging Face UK** | Transformers, smolagents, agent libs, open ecosystem | Python, PyTorch, JAX | Yes — UK-remote ML eng + applied | | **Aiven** | Open-source data platforms (Postgres, Kafka, OpenSearch) | Kotlin, Python, Go | Yes — UK-remote backend / SRE | | **Replicate** | Run open-weights ML models in production | Python, Go, GPU infra | Yes — UK-remote ML infra | | **Chainguard** | Hardened container images, supply-chain sec | Go, OS internals | Yes — UK-remote | | **GitLab** | DevOps platform, all-remote since 2014 | Ruby, Go, Vue | Yes — many UK roles | | **Automattic** (WordPress.com) | Pioneers of all-remote; some embedded/edge work | PHP, JS, infra | Yes — UK-remote | | **Doist** | Todoist, Twist; remote pioneers | Python, React | Selective | | **Buffer** | Social media tools | JS, Go | Selective | | **Zapier** | Automation platform (~all remote) | Python, JS | Yes — UK-remote senior IC | | **Sourcegraph** | Code intelligence, Cody AI | Go, TS | Yes — UK-remote | | **Hashicorp** (IBM) | Terraform, Vault, Consul | Go | Yes — UK-remote senior | | **Cloudflare** | Edge / Workers AI / Vectorize | Rust, C, Go | Yes — London office plus UK-remote | | **Synadia / NATS** | NATS messaging, agent transport | Go | Selective UK-remote | ## B. International AI / ML companies hiring UK residents These pay above UK market rate and routinely hire UK-resident senior engineers (some via UK entity, some via EOR like Deel / Remote.com / Velocity Global). | Employer | HQ | UK presence | What | Notes for this profile | |---|---|---|---|---| | **Anthropic** | San Francisco | London office | Claude frontier models, agentic Claude Code, MCP | Bullseye on MCP & agents — competition extreme | | **OpenAI** | San Francisco | London office | Frontier models, ChatGPT, Operator agent | Yes — small UK team, hires senior IC | | **Cohere** | Toronto / SF | London | Enterprise LLMs, RAG, North agent platform | Yes — London + UK remote | | **Mistral AI** | Paris | London office | Open-weights LLMs (Mistral, Mixtral); Le Chat agents | Excellent open-weights match; small UK team | | **Hugging Face** | New York / Paris | UK remote-heavy | Transformers, agents, datasets | Excellent open-weights match — UK remote-friendly | | **DeepMind** | London | London HQ | Frontier research (Gemini, Astra, SIMA) | London-based but flexible hybrid | | **Together AI** | San Francisco | UK-remote | Open-source LLM cloud + finetuning | Yes — UK-remote | | **Modal Labs** | New York | UK-remote | Serverless GPU compute for ML | Yes — UK-remote senior IC | | **Anyscale** | San Francisco | UK-remote | Ray + LLM serving | Yes — UK-remote | | **Pinecone** | New York | UK-remote | Vector DB, agent memory | Yes — UK-remote | | **Weaviate** | Amsterdam | UK-remote | Open-source vector DB | Yes — EU-aligned | | **Chroma** | San Francisco | UK-remote | Open-source AI memory | Selective | | **LlamaIndex** | San Francisco | UK-remote | Agent / data framework | Selective | | **LangChain** | San Francisco | UK-remote | LangGraph, LangSmith — direct stack match! | **Bullseye** — open roles for senior IC | | **CrewAI** | San Francisco | UK-remote | Multi-agent framework | Selective | | **Inflection AI** (Microsoft) | Palo Alto | UK-remote | Personal AI; some post-Microsoft restructure | Mixed | | **Adept** | San Francisco | UK-remote | Computer-use agents | Yes — competitive | | **Imbue** | San Francisco | UK-remote | Reasoning agents | Selective | | **Sakana AI** | Tokyo | UK-remote possible | Evolutionary ML, open research | Niche but interesting | | **Black Forest Labs** | Freiburg | UK-remote | FLUX image / video models | Yes — EU friendly | | **Stability AI** | London | London | Open-weights image / audio / 3D | Yes — London-based | | **AI21 Labs** | Tel Aviv | UK-remote | Foundation models, Jamba | Selective | | **Aleph Alpha** | Heidelberg | UK-remote possible | EU sovereign LLMs | Niche; minimal UK presence | | **Cerebras** | Sunnyvale | UK-remote | Wafer-scale AI accelerator | Yes — UK-remote senior IC; hardware/software cross-over fits | | **Groq** | Mountain View | UK-remote | LPU AI accelerator inference | Yes — UK-remote senior IC | | **Tenstorrent** | Toronto | UK-remote (no office) | Open-source AI accelerator | Yes — UK-remote | | **Lightning AI** | New York | UK-remote | PyTorch Lightning, Studios | Selective | | **Determined AI** (HPE) | San Francisco | UK-remote | ML training platform | Selective | ## C. EU labs / non-Anglo employers hiring UK-remote | Employer | HQ | Notes | |---|---|---| | **CERN openlab** | Geneva | Contract / fellowship roles; not pure remote but flexible | | **EPFL / ETH spin-outs** | Switzerland | Various AI/HW spin-outs hire EU/UK remote | | **Bosch / IBM Research Zurich / Microsoft Research Zurich** | EU | EU-remote for some roles | | **Mistral / Hugging Face / Black Forest Labs / Aleph Alpha** | EU | (covered above) — EU-aligned UK-remote | | **ASML / NXP / Infineon** | NL / DE | Some remote-friendly silicon roles | | **Wandelbots / Magazino / Neura Robotics** | DE | Robotics SW roles, EU-remote | | **Helsing AI** | Munich / London | Defence AI; UK office in London, hires UK-remote also | ## D. Open-source / foundation-funded engineering | Employer | What | Remote | |---|---|---| | **Linux Foundation** (LF Energy, LF AI, LF Edge, CNCF) | Various paid contributor / maintainer roles | Yes | | **Apache Software Foundation** | Volunteer + sponsored roles via member companies | Yes | | **Eclipse Foundation** | Eclipse projects, including IoT / embedded | Yes | | **Mozilla** | Firefox, Servo, AI experiments | Yes — UK-remote roles | | **Wikimedia Foundation** | Mediawiki, ML/abuse-detection | Yes | | **OpenJS Foundation** | Node, TC39 contributions | Mostly via member companies | | **OpenSSF** | Open-source security | Yes | | **NumFOCUS** sponsored projects (NumPy, SciPy, Jupyter, pandas) | Various | Yes — but often via grants / fellowships | | **PyTorch / Linux AI working groups** | Foundation-funded contributions | Through member companies (Meta, NVIDIA) | ## E. Realistic UK-remote job-board sources (April 2026) | Source | Typical UK-remote senior-IC AI/ML roles | Notes | |---|---|---| | [LinkedIn — UK Remote LLM](https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search/?keywords=LLM&location=United%20Kingdom&f_WT=2) | 600–1,200 | Filter "Remote" + "United Kingdom" | | [Wellfound (AngelList)](https://wellfound.com/role/l/artificial-intelligence-engineer/united-kingdom) | 300–600 | Startup-skewed, more honest about remote | | [Working Nomads](https://www.workingnomads.com/remote-artificial-intelligence-jobs-uk) | 100–300 | Curated remote; aggregator | | [RemoteRocketship](https://www.remoterocketship.com/jobs/llm-engineer/) | 200–500 | Fully-remote only; LLM filter | | [Arc.dev](https://arc.dev/remote-jobs/llm) | 100–250 | Remote-only LLM roles | | [AIJobs.net](https://aijobs.net/remote-companies/) | 150–400 | AI-specific | | [NoDesk](https://nodesk.co/remote-jobs/ai/) | 50–150 | Curated remote | | [Hacker News "Who is hiring"](https://hnhiring.com/locations/remote) | Monthly thread; ~40–80 senior-IC remote | Higher signal-to-noise | | [Y Combinator Work at a Startup](https://www.workatastartup.com) | YC startup remote-eligible roles | Founder-direct | ## Notes & caveats - **"Remote UK" can mean four very different things**: (1) fully remote with no office, (2) hybrid with monthly travel to office, (3) "remote in this region" e.g. anywhere in EU/UK, (4) "remote in approved countries" with strict geo-fencing. Filter and verify with the employer. - **EOR arrangements** (Deel, Remote.com, Velocity Global): US/EU companies can hire UK residents via an Employer of Record at modest salary haircut. Common for Anthropic, OpenAI, Cohere remote roles. - **Tax implications**: full-time remote for US co via UK entity is straightforward; via Deel-style EOR is also straightforward; 1099 contractor is *not* recommended for full-time IC work in the UK due to IR35. - **Time zones**: senior IC roles at SF / NY companies usually expect 4-hour overlap minimum (e.g. ~3 pm – 7 pm UK time). For deep-tech HW roles (Cerebras / Groq / Tenstorrent), more async-friendly than product roles. - **Equity vs. cash**: US AI startups offer significant equity. UK-resident exercise can be tax-complex (s162 elections, EMI not applicable to non-UK companies); use a UK accountant familiar with US-startup equity. - **Open-weights / agent / Linux-kernel** profiles travel the best across borders; **defence-cleared** profiles are essentially UK-only. ## Sources - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -