Senior Research Engineer in Natural Language Processing and Machine Translation (RE3-T2)

Job Reference

290_26_AII_MT_RE4

Position

Senior Research Engineer in Natural Language Processing and Machine Translation (RE3-T2)

Closing Date

Saturday, 27 June, 2026

Reference: 290_26_AII_MT_RE4

Job title: Senior Research Engineer in Natural Language Processing and Machine Translation (RE3-T2)

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 AI Institute at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) has consolidated significant expertise in cutting-edge AI domains, including massive language model construction, multimodal research, and large-scale computer vision. Central to the Institute's mission is the development of fundamental open-source resources and technologies for Spanish and other co-official languages—a goal currently being advanced through flagship national and international initiatives such as the ALIA and AINA projects.

To accelerate these objectives, the AI Institute is seeking Senior Researcher to lead the Machine Translation (MT) research group. The successful candidate will define the group's scientific agenda, drive high-impact research in neural machine translation and low-resource languages, and oversee the delivery of state-of-the-art language technologies. Working within a world-class HPC environment, the Researcher will lead a multidisciplinary team of researchers and engineers, coordinating complex technical workstreams and representing BSC within the international scientific community and public administrations.

Key Duties

• Lead the Machine Translation (MT) research group, setting the scientific agenda and quality standards for both research and system development.
• Drive high-impact scientific publications in top-tier NLP and computational linguistics venues
• Develop and advance state-of-the-art approaches in language technologies for under-resourced languages.
• Lead and coordinate multiple concurrent national and international R&D projects, ensuring scientific quality and timely delivery of results
• Identify and pursue competitive funding opportunities at the national (AEI, CDTI) and European (Horizon Europe, CEF) levels.
• Represent BSC in project consortia, managing relationships with academic and industrial partners.
• Oversee the development of language technology resources and tools aligned with national language policy priorities
• Coordinate large transversal initiatives across the AI Institute, including multi-team projects requiring alignment of diverse workstreams and stakeholders.
• Serve as scientific reference and liaison between the AI Institute and public administrations, government bodies, and international organisations
• Contribute to the strategic development of the AI Institute's NLP research agenda
• Represent BSC in the international scientific community through participation in programme committees and scientific advisory bodies
• Organise and chair scientific events (workshops, conferences, special sessions) in the NLP and language technology fields

Requirements

• Education
• PhD in Computational Linguistics, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, or a closely related field
• Essential Knowledge and Professional Experience
• Extensive research experience in Natural Language Processing, with a demonstrated focus on machine translation and multilingual language technologies
• Proven track record of leading competitive R&D projects, including experience as Principal Investigator (PI) or project coordinator
• Strong publication record in top-tier NLP venues, with more than 80 peer-reviewed contributions in journals, conferences, and edited volumes
• Experience leading a research group
• Expertise in neural machine translation, large language models, and NLP methods for low-resource languages
• Demonstrated ability to coordinate multi-project portfolios and manage simultaneous institutional responsibilities
• English and Spanis hare required, Catalan as a plus
• Additional Knowledge and Professional Experience
• Experience advising public administrations and government bodies on AI and language technology policy
• Familiarity with HPC environments and large-scale model training is valued
• Experience in evaluation methodologies for NLP systems, including MT evaluation frameworks.
• Active participation in the governance of international scientific societies or organisations.
• Competences
• Strategic scientific leadership: ability to define and execute a long-term research agenda with national and international impact.
• Research management: proven capacity to coordinate multiple concurrent projects and teams across institutional boundaries.
• Scientific communication: strong skills in academic writing, grant writing, and presentation at international venues
• Collaborative and interdisciplinary mindset: ability to work across research groups, departments, and institutions
• Commitment to open science, reproducibility, and linguistic diversity.

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: 16/07/2026

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 [email protected].

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

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