Overview
Join to apply for the Research Associate role at The University of Edinburgh.
Grade UE07: £41,064- £48,822 per annum
Science and Engineering / School of Informatics
Full-time: 35 hours per week
Fixed term: 2 years, until 31 December 2027
The Opportunity
The School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh invites applications for a 2-year Post-Doctoral Research Associate (PDRA) to do research on efficient methods for foundation models under the supervision of Dr Edoardo Ponti. The project is fully funded by ARIA’s Scaling Compute: AI at 1/1000th the cost (TA 4 Benchmarking) £2M project. The aim is to create a suite of next-generation benchmarks that track the AI landscape and measure trade-offs across costs, accuracy, and performance on various hardware. The position is part of Edinburgh NLP, ranked among the top groups in Europe for AI research. The PDRA will collaborate with team members at Edinburgh Informatics, Imperial, and EPCC and will conduct research on efficient LLM architectures and benchmarking use cases on different hardware. This position includes funding for international travel to conferences and access to HPC infrastructure. Hybrid working (remote and on-campus) may be considered non-contractually.
Responsibilities
* Conduct cutting-edge research in efficient LLM architectures, building on lab work on end-to-end tokenization and adaptive memory compression in LLMs.
* Assist the project team with benchmarking foundation models (e.g., parameter-efficient adaptation and inference-time scaling) on various hardware.
* Collaborate with Edinburgh NLP, Edinburgh Informatics, Imperial, and EPCC; contribute to publications and presentations.
Qualifications
* PhD or near completion in NLP, ML, MLSys, or related areas of computer science / engineering / mathematics.
* Track record of research excellence (e.g., preprints, publications).
* Experience implementing foundation models / LLMs (e.g., GitHub projects).
* Familiarity with deep learning hardware / accelerators and GPU/CUDA kernels.
Documentation for Application
* CV
* 1-page cover letter
* Up to 3 scientific papers and a link to a codebase illustrating research quality
Benefits and Environment
* Competitive salary
* Positive, creative, challenging, and rewarding workplace
* International community and diverse team
* Comprehensive staff benefits with generous holiday entitlement, pension schemes, and family-friendly initiatives
Equality and Right to Work
The University supports equality, diversity, and inclusion, and holds a Silver Athena SWAN award. Prior to employment, you will be required to evidence your right to work in the UK. The University may sponsor international workers depending on circumstances.
Key Dates
The closing date for applications is 23 September 2025. Unless stated otherwise, the closing time is 11:59pm GMT. If applying outside the UK, local time adjusts automatically in adverts.
About Us
As a world-leading, research-intensive university, the University of Edinburgh addresses tomorrow’s challenges with a values-led approach to teaching, research, and innovation, and through global collaborations. The School of Informatics conducts research across computation in artificial and natural systems and offers diverse opportunities for students and staff.
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