Postdoctoral Researcher – LLMs for AI-Assisted Educational Support

Vrije Universisteit; Amsterdam; Hybrid; EUR 41,000 - 64,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Holiday entitlement 232 hours/year

8% holiday allowance

8.3% end-of-year bonus

ABP pension

Commuting expenses

Hybrid working enables good work-life

Job summary

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam seeks a Postdoctoral Researcher to advance LLM components for Supporting OPP workflows in education. You will design prompting strategies, structured data representations and evaluation rubrics, working closely with software developers to integrate AI into the Presentis student information system.

Collaboration with education professionals is essential. You will publish results and supervise MSc students, contributing to open-source tools and AI-driven educational

Qualifications

• PhD in AI, CS, Computational Linguistics, NLP, HCI, Data Science or closely related field.
• Ability to work in a multidisciplinary consortium with researchers, software developers and education professionals.
• Excellent English; Dutch proficiency preferred or willingness to develop Dutch.
• Affinity with education or educational technology is desirable.
• Hands-on experience with Large Language Models and modern NLP methods.
• Good programming skills, preferably Python, with ML/NLP frameworks such as PyTorch and Hugging Face Transformers.
• Experience with prompt engineering and systematic evaluation of generative AI systems.
• Ability to design empirical comparisons between models, prompting strategies and configurations.

Responsibilities

• Select and benchmark state-of-the-art LLMs for Dutch-language OPP tasks.
• Develop and evaluate LLM components for generating OPP sections, e.g., Integrative Student Profile.
• Develop prompting strategies and structured input representations that combine OPP information.
• Investigate when prompt engineering suffices versus retrieval or fine-tuning.
• Develop rubric-based LLM methods for detecting quality issues in OPP text and generate improvement suggestions.
• Collaborate with software developers on architecture and API integration of LLM components.
• Define which OPP data elements are transferred to LLM and how output is incorporated into workflow.
• Publish results in AI, NLP, and Educational Technology venues.
• Supervise MSc students and engage with education professionals for co-design and user studies.

Skills

PhD AI

Multidisciplinary

English proficiency

Dutch willingness

NLP/LLM

Python

PyTorch

Transformers

Prompt engineering

Empirical evaluation

Education

PhD in AI/CS/NLP

Tools

PyTorch

Hugging Face Transformers

Transformers

Job description

Your function

As a Postdoctoral Researcher, you will play a central role in the development of Large Language Model (LLM) components that support education professionals in creating, maintaining and improving Individual Development Perspective Plans (Ontwikkelingsperspectiefplannen; OPPs).

The project does not aim to automate the creation of complete OPPs. Instead, you will investigate how LLMs can best support education professionals with specific, well-defined subtasks within the OPP workflow. Examples include generating a first draft of the Integrative Student Profile (Integratief Beeld) based on already completed OPP sections, supporting the formulation of the Educational Perspective / justification of the expected educational pathway, and providing targeted feedback on the quality of existing OPP text.

A key research challenge is to determine how information from different OPP sections (e.g., support needs) can be represented and provided to an LLM so that the generated output is coherent, concrete, actionable and consistent with the underlying information. You will develop and evaluate prompting strategies, structured input representations and, where useful, fine-tuned models for these tasks.

You will also work on LLM-based quality feedback. A quality rubric developed in the first phase of the project defines criteria such as concreteness, actionability, coherence, specificity of support needs and quality of the integrative profile. You will investigate how LLMs can use these criteria to identify weaknesses in OPP text and provide concise, prioritized and practically useful suggestions for improvement.

An equally important part of the position concerns the interaction between the AI component and the education professional. The AI system should support professional judgement rather than replace it. You will therefore investigate questions such as: When should AI support be offered? What information should be shown to the user? How should generated text and feedback be presented? How can users easily accept, reject or adapt suggestions? And how can the system make clear which OPP information was used to generate a suggestion?

Together with the software development partner, you will help design how these AI components can be integrated into an existing student information system. This includes defining the information exchanged between the student information system and the LLM, designing modular API-based components, and contributing to user-interface concepts that allow education professionals to invoke AI support within their normal workflow.

The research will be conducted iteratively and in close collaboration with education professionals. Prototype components will first be evaluated independently for output quality and will subsequently be integrated into the Presentis student information system (leerlingvolgsysteem) for user-centred evaluation and refinement.

To get a better idea about the project, see: https://www.ru.nl/onderzoek/onderzoeksprojecten/opp-vullen-en-onderhouden-met-ai

Your duties

• select and benchmark state-of-the-art open-source and commercial LLMs for Dutch-language OPP-related tasks
• develop and evaluate LLM components for generating specific OPP sections, initially focusing on the Integrative Student Profile and the Educational Perspective / justification of educational pathway
• develop prompting strategies and structured input representations that combine information from relevant OPP sections
• investigate when prompt engineering is sufficient and when techniques such as fine-tuning or retrieval-augmented generation provide added value
• develop rubric-based LLM methods for detecting quality issues in existing OPP text and generating concise, prioritized improvement suggestions
• develop methods for identifying generic or baseline support that occurs repeatedly across OPPs and distinguish this from student-specific support needs
• design and evaluate human-AI interaction patterns for AI-assisted OPP writing and revision
• investigate how generated text and feedback can best be presented so that education professionals retain control over the final content
• collaborate with software developers who will develop the technical architecture and API-based integration of LLM components into the Presentis student information system
• define which OPP data elements should be transferred to an LLM component and how generated output should be returned and incorporated into the existing workflow
• evaluate LLM output using the OPP quality rubric developed in the project and through evaluation with education professionals
• conduct co-design and user studies with teachers, behavioural scientists, support coordinators and other education professionals
• analyze the quality, reliability and limitations of generated OPP text and AI feedback
• contribute to open-source implementations of reusable OPP-specific LLM components and evaluation tools
• publish results in peer-reviewed AI, NLP, Human-AI Interaction and/or Educational Technology venues
• supervise MSc students working on related research topics
• collaborate closely with project partners from education, research and software development

Your profile

We are looking for a motivated researcher with expertise in modern Natural Language Processing and Large Language Models, who enjoys translating cutting-edge AI research into practical educational applications.

Job requirements

• PhD in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, Natural Language Processing, Human-AI Interaction, Data Science or a closely related field
• ability to work in a multidisciplinary consortium involving researchers, software developers and education professionals
• excellent communication skills in English; proficiency in Dutch, or the willingness and ability to develop sufficient Dutch proficiency to work with Dutch-language educational materials and users, is strongly preferred
• affinity with education, special education or educational technology is highly desirable
• demonstrated hands‑on experience with Large Language Models and modern NLP methods
• good programming skills, preferably in Python, and experience with relevant ML/NLP frameworks such as PyTorch and Hugging Face Transformers
• experience with prompt engineering and systematic evaluation of generative AI systems
• ability to design and run empirical comparisons between different models, prompting strategies and system configurations.
• experience with qualitative and/or quantitative evaluation of generated text
• interest in Human-AI Interaction and in designing AI systems that support rather than replace professional decision-making
• experience with Retrieval-Augmented Generation, model fine-tuning, structured generation, LLM evaluation frameworks or human-centred AI is an advantage
• experience with co-design, user studies or iterative prototyping with domain professionals is an advantage.
• analytical and scientific writing skills

We offer the opportunity to work on a socially relevant AI project in close collaboration with schools, software developers and educational experts. The position provides ample opportunity to publish internationally while contributing directly to AI applications that can improve educational practice.

As a university, we strive for equal opportunities for all, recognising that diversity takes many forms. We believe that diversity in all its complexity is invaluable for the quality of our teaching, research and service. We are always looking for talent with diverse backgrounds and experiences. This also means that we are committed to creating an inclusive community so that we can use diversity as an asset.

We realise that each individual brings a unique set of skills, expertise, and mindset. Therefore we are happy to invite anyone who recognises themselves in the profile to apply, even if you do not meet all the requirements.

What do we offer?

A challenging position in a socially engaged organisation. At VU Amsterdam, you contribute to education, research and service for a better world. And that is valuable. So in return for your efforts, we offer you:

• a salary of minimum € 3.706,00 (Scale 10) and maximum€ 5.760,00 (Scale 10) gross per month, on a full-time basis. This is based on UFO profile Researcher 4. The exact salary depends on your education and experience
• a position for EITHER 1.0 fte for 15 months OR 0.8 fte for 19 months.

We also offer you attractive fringe benefits and regulations. Some examples:

• a full-time 38-hour working week comes with a holiday leave entitlement of 232 hours per year. If you choose to work 40 hours, you have 96 extra holiday leave hours on an annual basis. For part-timers, this is calculated pro rata
• 8% holiday allowance and 8.3% end-of-year bonus
• solid pension scheme (ABP)
• contribution to commuting expenses
• hybrid working enables a good work-life balance

About us

About the department
The VUA Department of Computer Science has approximately 250 members, including 50 tenured staff members and 40-50 PhD students. The tenured staff members form the basis for the functioning of the department. A tenured staff member is required to make significant contributions to the research and education programmes, and to spend effort on specific tasks at the department level.

Faculty of Science
Working at the Faculty of Science means collaborating with students, lecturers and researchers who are focused on their field, yet have a broad view of the world. We are proud of a positive and inclusive workplace culture within the faculty, where we work together with great energy and a pragmatic attitude to tackle social challenges. At the Faculty of Science, scientists and students work on fundamental and complex societal issues for a sustainable, healthy and just future.

From forest fires to big data, from obesity to malnutrition, from helium to the universe and from genetics to medicine: our education and research cover the full breadth of science, from molecules to mankind. Our academic education and research are highly experimental, technical and interdisciplinary in nature. That is why we collaborate extensively with leading scientific institutes and industry. The faculty has more than 8,000 students studying in one of the 39 programms and employs more than 1,400 staff across 10 scientific departments, making us one of the largest science faculties in the Netherlands.

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam stands for values-driven education and research. We are open-minded experts with the ability to think freely - a broader mind. Maintaining an entrepreneurial perspective and concentrating on diversity, significance and humanity, we work on sustainable solutions with social impact. By joining forces, across the boundaries of disciplines, we work towards a better world for people and planet. Together we create a safe and respectful working and study climate, and an inspiring environment for education and research. Learn more about our codes of conduct

We are located on one physical campus, in the heart of Amsterdam's Zuidas business district, with excellent location and accessibility. Over 6,150 staff work at the VU and over 31,000 students attend academic education.

Diversity
Diversity is the driving force of VU Amsterdam. VU wants to be accessible and receptive to diversity in disciplines, cultures, ideas, nationalities, beliefs, preferences and worldviews. We believe that trust, respect, interest and differences lead to new insights and innovation, to sharpness and clarity, to excellence and a broader understanding.

We stand for an inclusive community and believe that diversity and internationalisation contribute to the quality of education, research and our services.

Therefore, we are always searching for people whose backgrounds and experience contribute to the diversity of the VU community.