Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is seeking a post-Masters Research Associate with expertise in Natural Language Processing (NLP) to contribute to the development and application of large language models and agentic systems for solving complex domain problems in science, energy, and national security.
Requirements
- Master’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Applied Mathematics, or a closely related field, with strong emphasis on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning.
- Strong record of peer-reviewed publications in Natural Language Processing (NLP), Large Language Models (LLMs), or related fields.
- Advanced proficiency in high-level programming, particularly Python, with hands-on experience using leading NLP and ML libraries (e.g., Hugging Face, LangChain).
- Proven ability to design, train, and deploy models using cloud platforms (AWS, Azure) and machine learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow).
- Demonstrated success in advancing scientific discovery through research outputs such as publications, open-source software, or innovative applied solutions.
- Prior experience working with large unstructured datasets, including text and images extracted from PDFs and developing Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines.
Responsibilities
- Application and training/evaluation of large language models.
- Creating LLM Agents and agentic systems.
- Natural language processing and prompt engineering.
- General data science, data curation and data processing.
- Applied mathematical principles to identify trends in data sets.
Other
- Candidates must have received a Master’s degree within the past 24 months or within the next 8 months from an accredited college or university.
- Eligibility for a HSPD-12 Personal Identity Verification (PIV) Credential, requiring a federal background investigation.
- Foreign national candidates must meet residency requirements to obtain a PIV credential.
- Disclosure of any affiliation with the government of a 'country of risk' as identified by the Department of Energy.
- Passing a drug test prior to commencing employment.
