Language Modeling Team Leader (R3)

Reference: 362_26_AII_LM_R3 Job title: Language Modeling Team Leader (R3)

About BSC

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) is the leading supercomputing center in Spain. It houses MareNostrum, one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe, was a founding and hosting member of the former European HPC infrastructure PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe), and is now hosting entity for EuroHPC JU, the Joint Undertaking that leads large-scale investments and HPC provision in Europe. The mission of BSC is to research, develop and manage information technologies in order to facilitate scientific progress. BSC combines HPC service provision and R&D into both computer and computational science (life, earth and engineering sciences) under one roof, and currently has over 1000 staff from 60 countries.

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We are particularly interested for this role in the strengths and lived experiences of women and underrepresented groups to help us avoid perpetuating biases and oversights in science and IT research. In instances of equal merit, the incorporation of the under-represented sex will be favoured.

We promote Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, fostering an environment where each and every one of us is appreciated for who we are, regardless of our differences.

If you consider that you do not meet all the requirements, we encourage you to continue applying for the job offer. We value diversity of experiences and skills, and you could bring unique perspectives to our team.

Context And Mission

The Language Modeling group at the newly created AI Institute hosted at BSC has consolidated experience in several AI areas, such as massive language model building. The Institute has been entrusted with the mission to develop fundamental open-source resources and technologies for Spanish and other co-official languages. In connection with this, this group is currently in charge of several flagship projects at the national and international level, including the ALIA project, funded by the Spanish Secretariat of Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence, and the OpenEuroLLM and LLMs4EU initiatives. In this context, the AI Institute is looking for a leader to oversee the operations and strategic direction of this research area. The successful candidate will work in a highly sophisticated HPC environment, have access to state-of-the-art systems and computational infrastructure and lead a multidisciplinary team of researchers and engineers. This role involves the high-level coordination of technical squads and data annotation teams to ensure the delivery of foundational AI models.

Key Duties

• Providing strategic leadership and technical direction for the Language Modeling research group.

• Acting as the Principal Investigator for national and international research projects focused on foundational model development.

• Managing extreme-scale supercomputing resource allocations across European and national infrastructures.

• Overseeing multidisciplinary teams, including research engineers, scientists and specialized data annotation groups.

• Directing the design and execution of high-impact training pipelines for multilingual models.

• Representing the institute and the center at high-level international forums and strategic meetings.

• Ensuring scientific excellence through the publication of rigorous research and the acquisition of competitive funding.

Requirements

• Education

  • PhD in Natural Language Processing, Computer Science, or a related field with a focus on artificial intelligence.

• Essential Knowledge and Professional Experience

  • Extensive experience in leading large-scale research teams and managing complex project roadmaps.
  • Proven track record in the training and alignment of large foundation models within high-performance computing environments.
  • Demonstrated experience in managing massive supercomputing allocations at an international level.
  • Strong background in deep learning frameworks and the infrastructure required for extreme-scale model training.
  • Experience acting as a Principal Investigator for multi-institutional and international AI projects.

• Additional Knowledge and Professional Experience

  • Recognized scientific excellence with a strong record of high impact publications, a high citation count and a significant h-index in top tier AI and NLP venues.
  • Extensive experience acting as a lead investigator, directing large scale research teams and managing complex multi institutional AI project roadmaps.
  • Proven track record in the training and alignment of large foundation models, including the management of massive supercomputing allocations and the infrastructure required for extreme scale training.
  • Fluency in spoken and written English at a professional technical and scientific level.
  • Knowledge of Spanish co-official languages such as Catalan is considered a plus.

• Competences

  • Outstanding leadership and team-building skills in a highly technical environment.
  • Strategic vision for the future of generative AI and foundational model research.
  • Ability to manage complex institutional relationships and diverse stakeholder interests.
  • Ability to resolve high-level technical and organizational challenges independently.

Conditions

• The position will be located at BSC within the Directors Department

• We offer a full-time contract (35h/week), a good working environment, a highly stimulating environment with state-of-the-art infrastructure, flexible working hours, extensive training plan, restaurant tickets, private health insurance, support to the relocation procedures

• Duration: Open-ended contract due to technical and scientific activities linked to the project and budget duration

• Holidays: 22 days of holidays + 6 personal days + 24th and 31st of December per our collective agreement

• Salary: we offer a competitive salary commensurate with the qualifications and experience of the candidate and according to the cost of living in Barcelona

• Starting date: 15/09/2026

Applications procedure and process

All applications must be submitted via the BSC website and contain:

• A full CV in English including contact details

• A cover/motivation letter with a statement of interest in English, clearly specifying for which specific area and topics the applicant wishes to be considered. Additionally, two references for further contacts must be included. Applications without this document will not be considered.

Development of the recruitment process

The selection will be carried out through a competitive examination system ("Concurso-Oposición"). The recruitment process consists of two phases:

• Curriculum Analysis: Evaluation of previous experience and/or scientific history, degree, training, and other professional information relevant to the position. - 40 points
• Interview phase: The highest-rated candidates at the curriculum level will be invited to the interview phase, conducted by the corresponding department and Human Resources. In this phase, technical competencies, knowledge, skills, and professional experience related to the position, as well as the required personal competencies, will be evaluated. - 60 points. A minimum of 30 points out of 60 must be obtained to be eligible for the position.

The recruitment panel will be composed of at least three people, ensuring at least 25% representation of women.

In accordance with OTM-R principles, a gender-balanced recruitment panel is formed for each vacancy at the beginning of the process. After reviewing the content of the applications, the panel will begin the interviews, with at least one technical and one administrative interview. At a minimum, a personality questionnaire as well as a technical exercise will be conducted during the process.

The panel will make a final decision, and all individuals who participated in the interview phase will receive feedback with details on the acceptance or rejection of their profile.

At BSC, we seek continuous improvement in our recruitment processes. For any suggestions or comments/complaints about our recruitment processes, please contact recruitment [at] bsc [dot] es. For more information, please follow this link.

Deadline

The vacancy will remain open until a suitable candidate has been hired. Applications will be regularly reviewed and potential candidates will be contacted.

OTM-R principles for selection processes

BSC-CNS is committed to the principles of the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers of the European Commission and the Open, Transparent and Merit-based Recruitment principles (OTM-R). This is applied for any potential candidate in all our processes, for example by creating gender-balanced recruitment panels and recognizing career breaks etc. BSC-CNS is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion. We are pleased to consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability or any other basis protected by applicable state or local law. For more information follow this link