About BSC
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) is the leading supercomputing center in Spain. It houses MareNostrum, one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe, was a founding and hosting member of the former European HPC infrastructure PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe), and is now hosting entity for EuroHPC JU, the Joint Undertaking that leads large-scale investments and HPC provision in Europe. The mission of BSC is to research, develop and manage information technologies in order to facilitate scientific progress. BSC combines HPC service provision and R&D into both computer and computational science (life, earth and engineering sciences) under one roof, and currently has over 1000 staff from 60 countries.
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We are particularly interested for this role in the strengths and lived experiences of women and underrepresented groups to help us avoid perpetuating biases and oversights in science and IT research. In instances of equal merit, the incorporation of the under-represented sex will be favoured.
We promote Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, fostering an environment where each and every one of us is appreciated for who we are, regardless of our differences.
If you consider that you do not meet all the requirements, we encourage you to continue applying for the job offer. We value diversity of experiences and skills, and you could bring unique perspectives to our team.
Context And Mission
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center is hiring a research engineer to work in a novel AI meth-ods, with a primary focus on Large Language Models (LLMs) for applications in the cognitive domain of defence. The person will address advanced language and multimodal models for information under standing, knowledge extraction, reasoning and decision support in complex information and cybersecurity environments.
Key Duties
- Support research on AI, particularly LLM-based methods, for cognitive-domain tasks, including information understanding, semantic analysis, knowledge extraction, reasoning and decision support.
- Designing and evaluating methods to adapt and augment foundation models, including prompt engineering, fine-tuning, Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) and agentic workflows.
- Investigating the robustness, reliability and security of LLMs and other multimodal models un-der noisy, manipulated or adversarial inputs (hallucinations, prompt injection, jailbreak-related behaviors).
- Developing experimental prototypes, datasets and benchmarks, and carrying out reproducible experiments using BSC computing and HPC infrastructure.
- Contributing to scientific publications, project deliverables and collaboration with academic and industrial partners.
Requirements
- Education
- Bachelor of Science or equivalent degree in data science, computer science, AI or applied mathematics and computation.
- Essential Knowledge and Professional Experience
- Academic background in ML and AI, including supervised and unsupervised learning (neural network regressors, classifiers, encoders).
- Solid mathematical foundations in statistics, optimization and linear algebra.
- Programming skills in scientific Python and practical experience with data analysis, machine learning experimentation and scientific computing workflows.
- Additional Knowledge and Professional Experience
- Experience with NLP, text classification, information extraction or other language-related machine learning tasks will be highly appreciated.
- Knowledge or hands-on experience with transformer-based models, attention mechanisms, prompt engineering, and fine-tuning techniques like RAGs or LoRA.
- Interest or experience in model robustness, adversarial machine learning, AI safety or cyber-security evaluation.
- Participation in academic or applied research projects and experience communicating scientific work through reports, posters, presentations or publications will be highly appreciated.
- Knowledge of C/C++, Julia, Git, Linux environments, HPC or distributed computing will be appreciated.
- Excellent communication in English.
- Competences
- Interest in foundation models and LLMs, together with a clear motivation to develop scientific research engineer career in emerging AI technologies.
- Ability to formulate research questions, design experiments and critically analyze quantitative and qualitative results.
- Proactive, rigorous and organized approach to work, with good planning and problem-solving skills.
- Capacity to work under scientific supervision and progressively develop autonomy in the defi-nition and execution of research activities.
- Team player and goal-oriented, with interest in co-working with industrial and academic partners on challenging problems.
- Strong analytical background, critical thinking and capacity for innovation.
Conditions
- The position will be located at BSC within the CASE Department
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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
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Duration: Open-ended contract due to technical and scientific activities linked to the project and budget duration
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Holidays: 22 days of holidays + 6 personal days + 24th and 31st of December per our collective agreement
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Salary: we offer a competitive salary commensurate with the qualifications and experience of the candidate and according to the cost of living in Barcelona
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Starting date: 01/09/2026
Applications procedure and process
All applications must be submitted via the BSC website and contain:
- A full CV in English including contact details
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A cover/motivation letter with a statement of interest in English, clearly specifying for which specific area and topics the applicant wishes to be considered. Additionally, two references for further contacts must be included. Applications without this document will not be considered.
Development of the recruitment process
The selection will be carried out through a competitive examination system ("Concurso-Oposición"). The recruitment process consists of two phases:
- Curriculum Analysis: Evaluation of previous experience and/or scientific history, degree, training, and other professional information relevant to the position. - 40 points
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Interview phase: The highest-rated candidates at the curriculum level will be invited to the interview phase, conducted by the corresponding department and Human Resources. In this phase, technical competencies, knowledge, skills, and professional experience related to the position, as well as the required personal competencies, will be evaluated. - 60 points. A minimum of 30 points out of 60 must be obtained to be eligible for the position.
The recruitment panel will be composed of at least three people, ensuring at least 25% representation of women.
In accordance with OTM-R principles, a gender-balanced recruitment panel is formed for each vacancy at the beginning of the process. After reviewing the content of the applications, the panel will begin the interviews, with at least one technical and one administrative interview. At a minimum, a personality questionnaire as well as a technical exercise will be conducted during the process.
The panel will make a final decision, and all individuals who participated in the interview phase will receive feedback with details on the acceptance or rejection of their profile.
At BSC, we seek continuous improvement in our recruitment processes. For any suggestions or comments/complaints about our recruitment processes, please contact recruitment [at] bsc [dot] es.
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Deadline
The vacancy will remain open until a suitable candidate has been hired. Applications will be regularly reviewed and potential candidates will be contacted.
OTM-R principles for selection processes
BSC-CNS is committed to the principles of the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers of the European Commission and the Open, Transparent and Merit-based Recruitment principles (OTM-R). This is applied for any potential candidate in all our processes, for example by creating gender-balanced recruitment panels and recognizing career breaks etc.
BSC-CNS is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion. We are pleased to consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability or any other basis protected by applicable state or local law.
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