Full-time postdoc position in A Coruña (Spain)

Come work with us in a cutting-edge NLP project!

We are looking for candidates for a full-time postdoc position in A Coruña (Spain) to conduct research in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP). The position will be available under the European Research Council (ERC Proof of Concept Grant) project "SALSA – efficient Syntactic Analysis for Large-scale Sentiment Analysis", led by Prof. Carlos Gómez-Rodríguez (http://grupolys.org/~cgomezr). The main goal of this project is to apply the efficient syntactic parsers developed in the previous ERC Starting Grant project “FASTPARSE – Fast Natural Language Parsing for Large-Scale NLP” (http://fastparse.grupolys.org) to sentiment analysis, producing systems that can be used by small entities without massive computational resources.

The University of A Coruña is a young, vibrant public university located in A Coruña, a charming city in the Atlantic coast of Galicia (Spain) offering high quality of life at an affordable cost of living for European standards.

The selected candidate will join the LyS research group, one of the most active NLP groups in Europe, with regular publications in the main tracks of the major NLP conferences (ACL, NAACL, EMNLP, etc.). The LyS group is an international and diverse group that joins together researchers from computer science and linguistics backgrounds interested in computational linguistics and NLP.

Job content:

The postdoctoral researcher will develop research within the ERC project SALSA (efficient Syntactic Analysis for Large-scale Sentiment Analysis). The goal of this research is to develop efficient, syntax-based sentiment analysis models. The postdoctoral researcher will be expected to publish at the top international conferences and journals in the field, but also to produce software that can be used in production, as this is an applied research project that seeks to bring products to market. Thus, this offer should be an especially good fit for candidates who have a solid research background but also skills and interests in software development and a desire to produce a direct impact on society.

Salary and benefits:

      • Gross salary of €40,880.04 per year. This is significantly above a typical postdoc salary in Spain, and a highly competitive salary with respect to cost of living.

      • Start date: February 1, 2023 (could be slightly delayed in case of visa delays, etc.).

      • Duration: until July 31, 2024.

      • The project will cover travel money for attending international conferences and making research visits to prestigious research institutions.

Minimum qualifications (exclusion criteria):

      • PhD degree in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, Mathematics or related fields.

      • Solid programming skills in Python (preferred) or at least one of C++, Java, C#, or similar.

      • Good level of spoken and written English.

      • Research experience (publications) in NLP/Computational Linguistics or Machine Learning. The candidate must have recent, high-impact scientific publications in the project's research area.

Preferred qualifications (evaluation criteria):

The applicant's scientific record will be assessed in terms of scientific quality, relevance, impact, breadth and relation to the goals of the project. The following aspects will be emphasized in the evaluation:

      • Research experience in natural language parsing and in NLP..

      • Experience with deep learning frameworks (e.g. PyTorch).

      • Publications in the top international conferences in NLP/Computational Linguistics or Machine Learning, or in journals of comparable quality.

      • Experience in software development, including in industry.

      • Knowledge in linguistics.

      • Independence and capacity to generate ideas autonomously.

      • Team work skills, and experience with international and interdisciplinary collaboration.

How to apply

Interested candidates can send their application by email to Carlos Gómez-Rodríguez (cgomezr@udc.es) including in attachment (PDF format):

      • Cover letter.

      • CV, including contact details, list of publications, and any other relevant information according to the criteria above.

      • Full contact details (name, address, telephone, email) of up to three professional references.

Candidates may be asked for additional information. Shortlisted candidates will be interviewed.

The formal application deadline is 20th December 2022. Candidates are encouraged to apply or get in touch as soon as possible.

Potential candidates are welcome to ask any questions to Carlos Gómez-Rodríguez, by email to cgomezr@udc.es or by Twitter DM to @carlosgr_nlp.