The Department of Computer Science and Engineering within the College of Engineering at Penn State is seeking a part-time programmer to help build a focused, sharp system that turns peer-reviewed nutrition literature into transparent, evidence-based recommendations.
Requirements
- Python 3.x; modern NLP/ML (PyTorch or TensorFlow, Hugging Face, scikit-learn); data/ETL tooling (pandas, spaCy, Pydantic, Airflow/Prefect).
- APIs/services: RESTful design, auth, pagination, retries, structured logging, unit/integration tests, CI.
- Storage/search: Postgres + vector/embedding store; graph DB experience welcome.
- DevOps basics: containers, reproducible envs, simple local deploys, secrets management.
- 3+ years professional Python and ML/NLP engineering, or equivalent portfolio.
- Strong engineering hygiene (tests, docs, code review) and product sense.
Responsibilities
- Stand up and own a PubMed or OpenAlex ETL that ingests open-access articles, normalizes metadata, and keeps our corpus fresh.
- Use and/or fine tune transformer models (e.g., BERT variants) to extract semantic triples (like: (ingredient)–[biolink:ameliorates_condition]–>(health condition)); build evaluation and error-analysis loops.
- Implement a ranking layer that blends evidence strength (study design, sample size, effect size) with model confidence.
- Build the recommendation/generative service that balances constraints (evidence score, compatibility, regulatory limits) and exposes a clean API.
- Construct/maintain a knowledge graph that links every recommendation back to source papers (full provenance) and supports plain-language evidence summaries.
- Collaborate tightly with PI and domain scientists; deliver milestones on a fast, 12-month pilot timeline.
Other
- Fully remote (U.S.); office space available at Penn State for hybrid/in-person if preferred.
- Part-time at $57/hour, 20 hours/week, 50 weeks. Continuation beyond 50 weeks depends on renewal/next-round funding.
- Please submit a brief cover letter and resume/CV.
- Employment with the University will require successful completion of background check(s) in accordance with University policies.
- Penn State is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to providing employment opportunities to all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status.
