[Hiring] Lead NLP / ML Researcher @Iris.ai

Role Description

We’re looking for a Senior/Lead LLM Researcher to lead Iris.ai’s research around LLM evaluation, model interpretability, and mechanistic interpretation of LLMs. You’ll define and drive research into how we evaluate, understand, and measure the reliability of LLMs - from answer quality and groundedness to uncertainty, confidence, and model behaviour. This is a research and leadership role with a strong applied focus. You’ll shape research directions, lead experimentation, and work closely with our engineering and product teams to turn research into products used within the Iris.ai platform. You’ll also participate in shaping projects for EU and national research funding, leading and co-authoring grant proposals such as Horizon Europe and EIC.

What You’ll Research:

• LLM evaluation — model grounding (in context, following instructions, following domain knowledge), faithfulness, and task adherence.
• Mechanistic interpretation - analyzing model behaviour during inference.
• Model interpretability — understanding and explaining model behaviour and outputs.
• Uncertainty & confidence — identifying when outputs can be trusted and when they cannot.
• Evaluation frameworks — developing scalable methods for comparing models, prompts, agents, and whole agentic systems.
• Agentic reasoning & control — understanding when models should reason, stop reasoning, or act, including inference‑time steering.
• Translation & multilingual NLP — evaluation and system design for modern LLM‑based translation, including low‑resource languages.

Your goal will be turning rigorous research into capabilities that real users can trust and use.

What You’ll Do:

• Lead Iris.ai’s research direction around LLM evaluation and interpretability.
• Design novel evaluation methods, metrics, and experimental frameworks.
• Run rigorous experiments, benchmarking, and ablation studies.
• Translate research into prototypes and production capabilities.
• Provide scientific guidance to researchers and engineers.
• Collaborate closely with product and engineering teams.
• Publish research and engage with the AI research community.
• Lead and co-author EU and national research grant proposals.
• Write and publish research articles.
• Supervise interns and master thesis students.

Our Tech Stack

• Languages: Python (strong OOP practices)
• ML: PyTorch, Transformers, TensorFlow
• LLMs: Hugging Face, OpenAI, custom and fine‑tuned models
• Systems: RAG pipelines, Multi-agent frameworks, Evaluation tools
• Infra: AWS, Docker, HPC
• Practices: Git, CI/CD, reproducible research workflows

Qualifications

• PhD in ML, NLP, Computer Science, or a related field.
• Strong, hands‑on experience with R&D grants and proposal writing (e.g. Horizon Europe, EIC, national or international research funding).
• 5+ years of industry or applied research experience.
• Strong background in NLP (transformers, semantic search, RAG).
• Hands‑on experience with LLMs and their evaluation.
• Solid software engineering skills and experience with Python.
• Publications in ML/NLP conferences or journals.
• Able to work within European time zones.

Benefits

• 30 days paid vacation.
• 5 additional days paid vacation for Learning and Development.
• Private health insurance (premium coverage) and bi-annual health checks.
• Free MultiSport card for your physical well-being.
• Remote-first & flexible hours — work where you're at your best.
• Personal annual learning budget for conferences, courses, or certifications.
• Personal equipment budget to choose the gear that suits your style.
• Charity and volunteer activities.
• Seasonal working camps (summer & winter) and team retreats.
• Ongoing growth through weekly tech deep dives, mentorship, pair coding, and knowledge-sharing.