Job offer

European Commission; España; Presencial; EUR 31.000 - 37.000; Jornada completa

Descripción de la vacante

A leading research institute in Spain seeks a predoctoral researcher to develop techniques for interpretability and watermarking of large language models. The position offers a gross salary of approximately €31,472.55 for the first year and aims to enhance the candidate's research experience through collaboration with top companies and institutions.

Servicios

90% coverage of training fees

Access to university services including sports and cultural activities

Formación

• High level of spoken and written English and Spanish.
• Strong programming skills in Python, especially with LLMs.
• Prior experience with watermarking techniques is highly valued.

Responsabilidades

• Develop interpretability and watermarking techniques for large language models.
• Conduct empirical evaluations and integrate authorship detection into workflows.
• Collaborate with a research team on transparency and accountability in LLMs.

Conocimientos

Programming in Python

Teamwork

Research project experience

Educación

Master’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, or Mathematics

Master’s in Big Data

Descripción del empleo

Organisation/Company Universidad Pontificia Comillas Department Institute for Research in Technology Research Field Engineering » Computer engineering Computer science Researcher Profile First Stage Researcher (R1) Positions PhD Positions Country Spain Application Deadline 30 Aug 2025 - 00:00 (UTC) Type of Contract Temporary Job Status Full-time Hours Per Week 37.5 Offer Starting Date 16 May 2025 Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Not funded by a EU programme Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

Offer Description

This doctoral project will focus on the development of interpretability and watermarking techniques for large language models (LLMs). It will address both methods to unravel the internal logic of transformers and strategies to embed digital watermarks into generated responses without degrading quality. The research will provide insights into:

• Internal attribution methods: Linking model predictions to specific components (layers, attention heads, neurons) and quantifying their influence on the output.
• Robust watermarking algorithms: Designing digital marks that withstand paraphrasing, collusion, and other text modifications.
• Empirical evaluation: Comparing explainability and watermark robustness metrics on standard benchmarks (e.g., GLUE, BigBench) and real-world use cases.
• Integration and traceability: Strategies for incorporating authorship detection and tracking systems into text-generation workflows, considering ethical and security implications.

Through deep learning techniques, statistical analysis, and empirical testing, the selected candidate will join a research team committed to advancing transparency and accountability in the use and deployment of LLMs.

Master’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, or Mathematics. Candidates with a Master’s in Big Data will be especially valued.

High level of spoken and written English and Spanish.

Strong programming skills in Python, with a particular focus on working with large language models (LLMs) and vision-language models (VLMs). Prior experience with watermarking techniques applied to LLMs is highly valued.

Strong teamwork skills. Research project experience is an asset.

Languages ENGLISH Level Excellent

Languages SPANISH Level Excellent

Additional Information

This position will enable the predoctoral researcher to establish a close professional relationship with leading companies and institutions, thereby enriching his/her research with the practical experience gained through cooperative projects.

Initially, this arrangement does not necessarily require the predoctoral researcher to enrol directly in a Doctoral program. Admission to a Doctoral program can be requested within the first two years.

The predoctoral researcher is hired on a yearly basis for a maximum period of six years. However, if the researcher is not enrolled in a Doctoral program, the contract cannot exceed two years.

The gross salary for the first year is approximately €31.472,55 (2025). Additionally, the IIT covers 90% of the fees for training activities, and the researcher will have access to all university services, including sports, cultural activities, and the library.

Eligibility criteria

Documents required:

Curriculum vitae, academic record, cover letter, and two recommendation letters.