Context And Mission
The Language Modeling Team at the newly created AI Institute hosted at BSC has consolidated experience in several NLP areas, such as massive language model building, biomedical text mining, and unsupervised learning for under-resourced languages and domains. It has been entrusted by the Spanish and the Catalan governments with the mission to develop fundamental open- source resources and technologies for Spanish and Catalan. In connection with this, the LM team is currently in charge of two flagship projects at the national and regional level: the ALIA project, funded by the Spanish Secretariat of Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence, and the AINA project, aimed at developing AI resources for Catalan, funded by the Catalan Digitalisation Department. In addition, the Unit participates in various EU funded international projects. In this context, the newly created AI Institute is looking for talent to help design and improve its operations and infrastructure.
The Language Modeling Team is looking for candidates with a background in computational linguistics with experience in Language Technologies, specifically in Deep Learning and large language model building, and possibly in other areas of Natural Language and Speech Processing.
The successful candidate will work in a highly sophisticated HPC environment, have access to state-of-the-art systems and computational infrastructures, and establish collaborations with experts in different areas at the local and international levels.
The researcher will implement innovative techniques for language modelling and evaluation in the HPC environment.
Key Duties
* Implement and test agentic workflows including multi-step reasoning and tool-use capabilities under the supervision of the senior architect.
* Develop and refine Function Calling interfaces and connectors using the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to enhance model interactivity.
* Execute post-training experiments using TRL, FastChat, and NeMo-RL to improve the agentic performance of small and large models.
* Build and maintain evaluation pipelines specifically designed to measure the reliability and safety of model-tool interactions.
* Collaborate with the data team to curate high-quality instruction datasets for task-oriented dialogue and function execution.
Requirements
* Education
o Degree in Computer Science, Mathematics or related.
* Essential Knowledge and Professional Experience
o Solid experience in Fine-tuning and Post-training of Large Language Models.
o Proficiency in Python and Deep Learning libraries such as PyTorch.
o Practical experience with Agentic AI patterns such as ReAct or autonomous tool-use.
o Hands-on experience with modern post-training frameworks including TRL, FastChat, or NeMo-RL
o Excellent level of English (written and spoken).
* Additional Knowledge and Professional Experience
o Familiarity with Model Context Protocol (MCP) and API integration for LLMs.
o Knowledge of advanced preference alignment methods like DPO, GSPO, or CISPO.
o Experience in developing benchmarking tools for function calling and reasoning.
o Fluency in Spanish is highly valued.
o Knowledge of co-official languages of Spain is a significant plus.
* Competences
o Strong technical execution skills with a focus on reproducibility and clean code.
o Ability to work effectively in a team-oriented research environment.
o Proactive problem-solving mindset when dealing with complex system integrations.
o Detail-oriented approach to evaluating model reliability and edge cases.
Conditions
* The position will be located at BSC within the Directors Department
* We offer a full-time contract (35h/week), a good working environment, a highly stimulating environment with state-of-the-art infrastructure, flexible working hours, extensive training plan, restaurant tickets, private health insurance, support to the relocation procedures
* Duration: Open-ended contract due to technical and scientific activities linked to the project and budget duration
* Holidays: 22 days of holidays + 6 personal days + 24th and 31st of December per our collective agreement
* Salary: we offer a competitive salary commensurate with the qualifications and experience of the candidate and according to the cost of living in Barcelona
* Starting date: ASAP