Postdoctoral Research Associate

Overview

The University of Liverpool invites applications for a postdoctoral research associate position within the Faculty of Science and Engineering, specifically in the School of Computer Science and Informatics. This role is tied to AIM-SAFE, a Horizon Europe project that develops a multi-agent clinical reasoning framework using open-weight, locally deployable artificial intelligence. The project is carried out in partnership with KAIST, Knowledgator, the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, and CERN.

The appointed researcher will take day-to-day technical ownership of Work Package 5, Task 5.1, led by the University of Liverpool. Responsibilities include benchmarking and selecting open-weight small language models for clinical natural language processing tasks, designing parameter-efficient fine-tuning pipelines within a reproducible machine learning operations framework, and applying quantization for deployment in National Health Service environments. Additional duties involve integrating federated and privacy-preserving learning through the CERN platform, embedding the clinical safety governance layer, leading Deliverable D5.1, and acting as a technical liaison with partner teams leading multi-agent orchestration and retrieval-augmented generation. The researcher will also publish in high-impact venues and mentor junior researchers within the Intelligent Systems Research Group.

What you get

The position offers a salary between £39,906 and £46,049 per annum. Candidates who are still awaiting the formal award of their PhD will initially be appointed at Grade 6, spine point 30, with an increase to Grade 7, spine point 31 upon written confirmation of the PhD award. The post is available as a full-time, fixed-term contract for a tenure lasting up to 31 May 2030.

Requirements

Applicants may apply while still awaiting their PhD to be awarded. The employer encourages applications from individuals of minoritised genders and ethnic backgrounds, individuals living with a disability, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community to support workforce diversity.

Key dates

The closing date for applications is 12 November 2026 at 23:30.