Scientific Programmer with expertise in Natural Language Processing

Itec is a research group at KU Leuven and imec, Flanders’ high-tech research and innovation hub for nanoelectronics and digital technologies. On the campus Kortrijk of KU Leuven, the group conducts interdisciplinary research on the design, development and evaluation of personalized and adaptive digital solutions. Itec’s primary application domains include education, training, and health.
You will be joining the language & technology team, where we focus on researching and developing innovative natural language processing techniques, especially those based on recent transformer models. Our goal is not only to engineer new solutions but also to ensure our work is linguistically relevant and grounded. We apply our research to various educational tasks, including essay scoring, difficulty prediction, dialogue systems, feedback, generation, AI content detection, …
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Responsibilities

As a scientific programmer, you will support our ongoing research projects in NLP by developing, optimizing, and maintaining code and platforms. These research projects are industrially relevant and in collaboration with companies.
More specifically, you will:

• support and contribute to the ongoing development of algorithms for NLP research, with a focus on transformer-based methods;
• support the maintenance of coding platforms (GitLab);
• implement code reviews (TDD, etc.) to ensure software quality and reliability;
• document existing data and code;
• collaborate on ongoing and future research projects;
• stay current with advancements in NLP, ML, and scientific computing.

Profile

• You hold a master's degree in computer science, data science, computational linguistics, or a related field, with specialized training in AI and natural language processing.
• Your technical expertise includes:

         - Strong programming skills, particularly in Python. Proficiency in other languages is a plus.
         - Experience with machine learning and deep learning techniques, and relevant libraries such as scikit-learn, PyTorch, and transformers.
         - Familiarity with version control (Git) and DevOps tools (Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines).
         - Knowledge of parallel computing and high-performance computing (GPU, CUDA, etc.).
         - Basic knowledge of full-stack software development or a strong willingness to quickly develop these skills.

• You possess strong problem-solving and analytical abilities, with a research-oriented mindset. You can take initiative and excel both independently and as part of a team.
• Additionally, you have excellent communication skills, with fluency in English and preferably Dutch, both spoken and written.

Offer

• We offer full-time employment for a scientific programmer. The appointment will be for 1 year initially and can be extended after a positive evaluation, depending on available funding. Possible avenues for working toward a doctoral position over time can also be considered.
• The candidate will be working at KU Leuven Campus Kulak in Kortrijk.
• As a scientific programmer, you will have every opportunity to develop yourself further in your professional career, by studying literature, attending seminars and workshops, and interacting with leading researchers from multiple disciplines.
• The position offers flexibility and the opportunity to work in an enthusiastic team in a stimulating multicultural environment.
• In addition to a competitive salary, KU Leuven also offers several additional benefits, such as hospitalization insurance, eco-vouchers, reimbursement of commuting expenses by public transport, inexpensive meals, a KU Leuven bicycle, ...

Interested?

For more information please contact Mrs. Anaïs Tack, tel.: +32 56 49 27 17, mail: [email protected] or Mr. Frederik Cornillie, tel.: +32 56 24 64 40, mail: [email protected].

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