Research Assistant in Multimodal Retrieval and Language Processing

UNIVERSITY OF SURREY; United Kingdom; On-site; GBP 25,000 - 35,000; Part time

Job summary

A leading UK university is looking for a Graduate Researcher to develop a framework for vision-language research. The ideal candidate should have a MSc in computer science, strong programming skills, and knowledge in machine learning and natural language processing. This part-time role involves collaboration in a multidisciplinary team and contributes to research publications. Applications are invited with a CV and covering letter.

Qualifications

• Strong background in at least two of machine learning, NLP, large language models, and multimodal processing.
• Excellent programming skills required.
• Ability to work independently and collaboratively.

Responsibilities

• Develop and evaluate a framework for vision-language research.
• Contribute to research publications produced in the project.

Skills

Machine learning

Natural language processing

Large language models

Multimodal processing

Programming skills

Education

MSc in computer science

Job description

Organisation/Company UNIVERSITY OF SURREY Research Field Computer science Researcher Profile Recognised Researcher (R2) First Stage Researcher (R1) Country United Kingdom Application Deadline 29 Sep 2025 - 00:00 (UTC) Type of Contract Other Job Status Part-time 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

The University of Surrey is a global community of ideas and people, dedicated to life-changing education and research.

We are ambitious and have a bold vision of what we want to achieve - shaping ourselves into one of the best universities in the world, which we are achieving through the talents and endeavour of every employee.

Our culture empowers people to achieve this aim and to collectively, and individually, make a real difference.

The role

We are seeking a Graduate Researcher to join a multidisciplinary team working on a research project funded by eBay which aims to create a framework to support vision-language (V-L) research. The framework to be developed will be leveraging existing pre-trained vision-language models to improve the performance of matching listings with existing products, and for tasks like product listing moderation, attribute extraction, explained relevance prediction. This framework can later also serve as a testbed for customer support chatbots with image understanding and image-based product search. The appointed research is expected to be involved in the development and evaluation of the framework, and to contribute to the research publications produced in the project.

About you

The appointed candidate will have at least a MSc in computer science and a very good understanding of how visual language models work and can be used in practical applications.

We are particularly interested in individuals who have:

• Strong background at least two of the following areas: machine learning, natural language processing, large language models and multimodal processing
• Excellent programming skills
• The ability to work both independently and as part of a collaborative team, often across disciplines.
• Experience with scientific writing and the preparation of research outputs.

How to apply

Please upload your CV and a covering letter where you outline your interest in the role and how your background fits with the project. Shortlisted applicants will be invited to an interview last week of September, with the successful candidate expected to start shortly afterwards.

Interviews will be held on Wednesday 8th October.

The University of Surrey reserves the right to close this vacancy early/extend based on Volume and Calibre of applications.