UNIV - Staff Scientist I - Department of PHS

Medical University Hospital Authority (MUHA); South Carolina; On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) seeks a research-focused AI engineer to design, develop, and maintain LLM, RAG, and NLP systems for cancer research infrastructure (CIDER). You will collaborate with clinical, educational, and research teams to identify requirements and deploy AI-enabled tools.

Responsibilities include building secure, scalable pipelines, managing cloud-hosted services, experimenting to validate model outputs, preparing manuscripts, and supporting long-term plans for

Qualifications

• Experience designing and maintaining LLM, RAG, and NLP systems for research.
• Ability to collaborate with clinical, educational, and research teams to define requirements.

Responsibilities

• Conduct research and engineering for CIDER: design, build, evaluate, and maintain LLM and RAG systems for clinical data.
• Develop, deploy, and maintain AI-assisted research pipelines in secure environments.
• Design experiments to evaluate AI methods and publish results.
• Prepare reports and proposals for researchers and leadership.
• Collaborate with investigators and data owners to define use cases, data sources, and validation criteria
• Ensure security and compliant operation of AI infrastructure

Skills

LLM development

RAG systems

NLP systems

research engineering

Tools

Cloud platforms

Containerization

Monitoring

Job description

Job Description Summary

Designs, develops, and maintains large language model (LLM), retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and natural language processing (NLP) systems for research across MUSC, including infrastructure for the Cancer Integrated Data-Enabled Resource (CIDER) that supports research at Hollings Cancer Center. Collaborates with clinical, educational, and research teams to identify requirements and obtain the data needed to build, validate, and deploy AI-enabled research tools. Partners with investigators and project teams across MUSC to define requirements for new research initiatives. Designs and conducts experiments to evaluate model outputs for accuracy, reliability, and fitness for research use, and prepares manuscripts and presentations for scientific dissemination. Develops, implements, and oversees procedures to ensure the security, availability, and compliant operation of AI applications and supporting infrastructure. Contributes to the development and implementation of long-term plans for AI-enabled research tools and responds to requests from research teams for AI-enabled tools and analyses.

Job Description

Designs, develops, and maintains large language model (LLM), retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and natural language processing (NLP) systems for research across MUSC, including infrastructure for the Cancer Integrated Data-Enabled Resource (CIDER) that supports research at Hollings Cancer Center. Collaborates with clinical, educational, and research teams to identify requirements and obtain the data needed to build, validate, and deploy AI-enabled research tools. Partners with investigators and project teams across MUSC to define requirements for new research initiatives. Designs and conducts experiments to evaluate model outputs for accuracy, reliability, and fitness for research use, and prepares manuscripts and presentations for scientific dissemination. Develops, implements, and oversees procedures to ensure the security, availability, and compliant operation of AI applications and supporting infrastructure. Contributes to the development and implementation of long-term plans for AI-enabled research tools and responds to requests from research teams for AI-enabled tools and analyses.

Job Duties

• 35% Conduct research and engineering for CIDER in support of cancer research, including designing, building, evaluating, and maintaining LLM and RAG systems for clinical data; developing retrieval, prompting, and evaluation methods; and validating outputs for research projects.
• 30% Develop, deploy, and maintain AI-assisted research pipelines and applications-such as LLM-assisted coding of clinical transcripts and adaptive learning tools-in secure, controlled environments. Responsibilities include managing cloud-hosted LLM services, containerization, monitoring, reliability, and costs.
• 15% Design and conduct experiments to evaluate AI methods, including benchmark evaluations and model comparisons; analyze and interpret results; and prepare manuscripts for peer-reviewed journals and conferences.
• 15% Prepare reports, presentations, manuscript methods sections, and proposal materials for research colleagues and institutional leadership. Gather requirements for new and ongoing funded studies by collaborating with investigators, clinical and educational teams, and data owners to define use cases, data sources, and validation criteria.
• 5% Collaborate with team members and project managers through meetings and collaborative programming to ensure assigned tasks are completed accurately and on schedule.

Additional Job Description

Physical Requirements: (Note: The following descriptions are applicable to this section: Continuous - 6-8 hours per shift; Frequent - 2-6 hours per shift; Infrequent - 0-2 hours per shift) Ability to perform job functions in an upright position. (Continuous) Ability to perform job functions in a seated position. (Continuous) Ability to perform job functions while walking/mobile. (Frequent) Ability to climb stairs. (Infrequent) Ability to work indoors. (Continuous) Ability to work in all cold temperature extremes, i.e. spot coolers. (Frequent) Ability to bend at the waist. (Frequent) Ability to twist at the waist. (Frequent) Ability to perform 'pinching' operations. (Continuous) Ability to fully use both hands/arms. (Continuous) Ability to perform repetitive motions with hands/wrists/elbows and shoulders. (Continuous) Ability to fully use both legs. (Continuous) Ability to reach in all directions. (Continuous) Possess good finger dexterity. (Continuous) Ability to maintain tactile sensory functions. (Continuous) Ability to maintain good olfactory sensory function. (Continuous) Ability to

Job Details

Entity
Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC - Univ)
Worker Type
Employee
Worker Sub-Type
Research Grant
Cost Center
CC001038 COM PHS Operations CC
Pay Rate Type
Salary
Pay Grade
University-00
Pay Range
0.00 - 0.00 - 0.000
Scheduled Weekly Hours
40
Work Shift