Master student - Performance of Machine Learning applied to Earth Sciences (R0) - AI4Land
We are looking for a Master student to join the AI4Land project at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) in the Earth Sciences Department.
Job Reference: 718_25_ES_CES_R0
Closing Date: Sunday, 21 December 2025
Location: BSC, Earth Sciences Department
About BSC
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC‐CNS) is Spain's leading supercomputing centre. It hosts MareNostrum, one of Europe's most powerful supercomputers, and is a key partner in PRACE and EuroHPC JU. BSC focuses on research, development and management of information technologies to facilitate scientific progress in life, earth and engineering sciences, with over 1,000 staff from 60 countries.
Context & Mission
The Earth Sciences Department (BSC‐ES) is a leading group in air quality, atmospheric composition modelling, climate prediction and climate services. It comprises about 200 researchers organised in five groups: Atmospheric Composition, Climate Prediction, Earth System Services, Global Health Resilience and Computational Earth Sciences. The AI4Land project aims to improve representations of the carbon and water cycles by generating high‐resolution reconstructions of land use, land cover and leaf area index, thereby advancing machine‐learning–driven land surface boundary conditions for Earth system modelling.
Key Duties
Launch and monitor ML training and inference pipelines used to generate high‐resolution land surface reconstructions within4Land project.
Analyse computational performance of the ML workflows, including profiling resource usage, evaluating data throughput and assessing scalability across computing environments.
Identify performance bottlenecks and collaborate with project scientists to propose and implement workflow optimisations.
Participate in regular project meetings and collaborative activities to present findings, gather feedback and align workflow improvements with scientific objectives.
Contribute to documentation, technical reports and workflow descriptions to ensure transparency, reproducibility and effective knowledge transfer across project teams and partners.
Requirements
Education : Enrolled in a Master's program in Computer Science, Data Science, Computational Engineering, Environmental Sciences or a related field.
Essential skills : Strong programming skills in Python; experience with UNIX‐based environments and command‐line workflows; good written and verbal communication skills in English; ability to work in a multidisciplinary and international team.
Additional skills : Experience developing modular and reproducible data workflows; familiarity with container technologies (Docker, Singularity, Podman); working knowledge of HPC environments and batch schedulers (SLURM); experience with workflow management tools; familiarity with climate data formats (NetCDF, Zarr); basic understanding of AI/ML model execution and integration.
Competences : Strong problem‐solving and analytical skills; ability to work independently and proactively in a research environment; effective communication and teamwork skills; proficiency in written and spoken English.
Conditions
Full‐time contract (37.5 h/week) at BSC within the Earth Sciences Department.
Flexible working hours, extensive training plan, state‐of‐the‐art infrastructure, restaurant tickets, private health insurance and relocation support.
Duration: open‐ended contract linked to the project and budget duration.
Holidays: 22 days of holidays + 6 personal days + 24th and 31st December per the collective agreement.
Salary: competitive and commensurate with qualifications and experience, adjusted for the cost of living in Barcelona.
Starting date: ASAP.
Applications Procedure
All applications must be submitted via the BSC website and contain a full CV in English (including contact details), a cover/motivation letter in English specifying the specific area and topics of interest, and two references. Applications lacking any of these documents will not be considered.
Recruitment consists of two phases: curriculum analysis (60 %) and interview (40 %). Candidates scoring at least 30 points out of 60 are eligible for the interview. The recruitment panel is gender‐balanced, with at least 25 % representation of women.
Recruitment Principles
BSC‐CNS follows the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers of the European Commission and the Open, Transparent and Merit‐Based Recruitment principles (OTM‐R). BSC‐CNS is an equal‐opportunity employer and considers all qualified applicants without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability or any other lawful basis.
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