GATE Centre of Excellence “Big Data for Smart Society” is a research institute, established in 2019 in Sofia, Bulgaria as a joint initiative between Sofia University Bulgaria, Chalmers University of Technology (Chalmers) and Chalmers Industrial Technology (CIT), Sweden.

GATE’s mission is to:

• Establish a world-class ecosystem for basic and applied Big Data and Artificial Intelligence research and innovation
• Be a focal point between academia, government and industry for Big Data and Artificial intelligence domain
• Serve as a catalyst for economic growth based on data-science innovation, digitalization, and knowledge-based entrepreneurship across various economic sectors.

GATE creates value and delivers innovation excellence into the following four strategic application themes:

• Future Cities
• Intelligent Government
• Smart Industry
• Digital Health

With respect to its intensive development, GATE CoE is looking for Researchers in NLP and LLMs (R1, R2).

Responsibilities

Common

• Develop and fine-tune large language models (LLMs) for NLP applications such as text generation, summarization, retrieval, and classification.
• Implement retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), fine-tuning, and parameter-efficient tuning (LoRA, adapters, etc.).
• Optimize transformer-based architectures (GPT, BERT, T5, LLaMA, Mistral, Falcon, etc.) for efficiency and accuracy.
• Design and optimize prompt engineering strategies to improve LLM performance across different tasks.
• Research and apply advanced prompt engineering techniques, such as chain-of-thought reasoning, self-consistency, few-shot learning, and instruction tuning.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate NLP solutions into real-world applications, including conversational AI, document intelligence, and enterprise search.
• Stay updated with the latest advancements in NLP, deep learning, and generative AI research.
• Disseminating results through scientific publications.

Engage in appropriate training and development opportunities.

One or more of the following responsibilities

• Work with vector databases (FAISS, Weaviate, Pinecone), embeddings, and knowledge graphs to improve AI retrieval capabilities.
• Deploy models on cloud platforms, edge devices, and scalable AI inference systems.

 

Skills, Experience and Qualifications

Essential

• Junior researcher: А minimum of bachelor’s or master’s degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Applied Mathematics, Engineering, or a related discipline;
• Experienced researcher: A PhD Degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Applied Mathematics, Engineering, or a related discipline or a Master’s Degree plus a minimum of 4 years of industry-based relevant research experience;
• Strong background in NLP, deep learning, and transformer-based architectures.
• Experience with LLMs (GPT, BERT, T5, LLaMA, Mistral, Falcon, etc.) and fine-tuning techniques.
• Expertise in prompt engineering strategies for task-specific and general-purpose LLM applications.
• Proficiency in Python, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face Transformers.
• Experience with LLM fine-tuning, RLHF, and model compression (quantization, distillation).
• Solid oral/written communication and presentation skills to explain the outcome of the research to coworkers and peers;
• Ability to prioritize tasks and work on multiple assignments, and a deep desire to find ways to create value and deliver results.
• Fluent English is a must.

Experience with one or more of the following

• Familiarity with vector databases (FAISS, Weaviate, Pinecone), RAG, and knowledge graphs.
• Understanding of LLM inference optimization (ONNX, TensorRT, Triton Inference Server, vLLM, DeepSpeed).
• Experience in chatbot development, enterprise AI, or search/recommendation systems.
• Demonstrated academic and other outputs in the form of scientific publications in NLP/AI, grants, fellowships and/or public repositories such as GitHub.

 

Why join us as a Researcher?

• You will be able to conduct industrially-relevant, applied research without the stress of the industrial environment;
• You will constantly develop your knowledge and skills as a natural consequence of your daily research responsibilities;
• You will join and collaborate with a team of researchers, but will have the freedom to conduct research in any area within the scope and priorities of GATE, creating new visions for the future;
• Your research will be supported by an advanced research infrastructure, comprising the GATE platform and Open Innovation Labs;
• You will be able to participate in cross-cutting research with other research groups at the Institute;
• You will be able to disseminate your achievements through publications in world-class scientific journals and participation in international conferences;
• You will be able to benefit from numerous training, knowledge exchange and professional development opportunities at national and international level.

 

Why join our team as an Employee?

• You will work in a modern and attractive environment that stimulates creativity and productivity;
• You will be offered competitive working conditions and remuneration commensurate with your skills and experience.
• You will be part of a supportive, driven, and genuinely fun team that values collaboration and celebrates success together;
• You will be able to participate in regular team-building events – From off-site retreats to escape rooms and quiz “nights”, we know how to mix work with play;
• You will be able to access training, mentorship, and funding for courses and conferences to keep you growing;
• You will have flexible work options – hybrid work possibilities, flexible hours, and understanding of work-life balance;
• Multisport card.

 

How to apply

Please send your contact data and files with personal documents via https://www.gate-ai.eu/en/application-form/ until May 31, 2025:

• Cover letter that explains the motivating factors for considering the position (1-2 pages);
• Curriculum vitae;
• Copies of diplomas for completed education and certificates of qualification;
• Two letters of support from academic tutors, former supervisors, mentors or equivalent, including their contact details provided as appendices in the cover letter or as a separate document;
• As an attachment to your application, please sign, scan and enclose the following declaration:
  I agree to the processing of my personal data included in this application for the needs necessary to carry out the recruitment.

Additional information on the site www.gate-ai.eu or contact us on: 

By applying for these positions, you voluntarily provide your personal data and consent to the processing of such data for recruitment and selection purposes. The processing of your personal data is carried out in accordance with the requirements of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation), the Personal Data Protection Act and related regulations in Bulgaria.

Selection stages

• Examination of the documents submitted and admission to the competition of those who satisfy the requirements set out in the notice. The successful candidates will be informed by May 31, 2025.
• An interview with the successful candidates will take place until June 6, 2025.
• All interviewed candidates will be informed of the outcome of the competition.
• The selected candidates will be hired on a labour contract.