Grade UE07: £41,064 - £48,822 per annum (pro-rata if part-time)
College of Science & Engineering / School of Informatics
Full-time: 35 hours per week
Fixed-term: for 18 months
The Opportunity:
Together we can do great things. Be part of something bigger.
With roles from hospitality to research, there's a career for everyone at the University of Edinburgh. We can offer opportunities for you to develop in your career and make a real difference in the communities around us while contributing to the world at large.
The University of Edinburgh is a world-class organisation. We look for the best in the field across all disciplines and provide a working environment where academics can develop their careers and passion for their chosen subject area. We offer the full range of academic roles and have a genuine focus on our student's performance and wellbeing.
The School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh invites applications for a 1.5-year Post-Doctoral Research Associate (PDRA) to do research on benchmarking sparse, reasoning, and agentic foundation models, under the supervision of Dr Edoardo Ponti and Dr Luo Mai.
The project is fully funded by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA)'s Scaling Compute: AI at 1/1000th the cost (TA 4 Benchmarking) £2M project. As part of this project, we aim to create a suite of next-generation benchmarks that track the fast-evolving landscape of AI, and measure the complex trade-offs across costs, accuracy, and performance on a range of state-of-the-art hardware. This project holds promise to open new avenues in developing and deploying AI models that are fast, environmentally friendly, and energy efficient.
The PDRA will be part of Edinburgh Informatics, which is ranked among the top groups in Europe for AI/ML/NLP research according to CSRankings. The PDRA will be supervised by Dr Edoardo Ponti and Luo Mai and collaborate with other team members based at Edinburgh, Imperial, and EPCC, one of the UK leading supercomputing centres.
The PDRA role involves 1) conducting cutting-edge research in efficient LLM/VLM architectures; and 2) assisting the project team with benchmarking different workloads of foundation on a variety of hardware.
This position includes funding for international travel to attend conferences and offers access to our HPC infrastructure. The position is open to UK and international applicants, with visa sponsorship available.
This position is advertised as full-time (35 hours per week). We are also open to considering requests for hybrid working (on a non-contractual basis) that combines a mix of remote and regular on-campus working.
People have always been at the heart of our work. As part of the University, you are a part of our community. We are looking for people with drive, determination, and a passion for what they do. We are a place where everyone is welcome and offer a range of policies and benefits designed to support you in building the right meaningful/personalised flexibility for you.
Your skills and attributes for success:
* A PhD (or near completion) in NLP, ML, MLSys, or related areas of computer science, engineering, or mathematics.
The following criteria are not strict yes/no requirements; rather, candidates will be assessed on the strength of their experience and evidence across these areas. Recruitment will aim to select the candidates demonstrating the strongest overall profile.
* Track record of research excellence, evidenced by e.g. preprints and publication record.
* Experience in implementation, training, and deployment of foundation models (LLMs and VLMs), evidenced by e.g. projects on Github.
* Familiarity with AI hardware and ability to track cost and performance metrics.
* Ability to work in a large team.
Contact details for enquiries (name and email address):
Edoardo Ponti ) and Luo Mai )
A career with us has a range of other benefits that can be tailored to your lifestyle:
* Professional development and subject matter expertise
* Leading-edge research
* Contributing to the work and purpose of the University.
View the full job description
How to apply
Please include the following documents in your application:
* CV
* Cover letter
* A maximum of 3 scientific papers that illustrate the research quality of the candidate and their affinity with the research topic
As a valued member of our team, you can expect:
* A competitive salary.
* An exciting, positive, creative, challenging and rewarding place to work.
* To be part of a diverse and vibrant international community.
* Comprehensive Staff Benefits, including generous annual leave entitlement, a defined benefits pension scheme, a wide range of staff discounts, family-friendly initiatives, and flexible work options. Check out the full list on our staff benefits page and use our reward calculator to discover the value of your pay and benefits.
Championing equality, diversity, and inclusion
The University of Edinburgh holds a Silver Athena SWAN award in recognition of our commitment to advance gender equality in higher education. We are members of the Race Equality Charter, and we are also Stonewall Scotland Diversity Champions, actively promoting LGBT equality.
Prior to any employment commencing with the University, you will be required to evidence your right to work in the UK. Further information is available on our right to work webpages.
The University may be able to sponsor the employment of international workers in this role. This will depend on a number of factors specific to the successful applicant.
Key dates to note
The closing date for applications is 5th March 2026.
Unless stated otherwise the closing time for applications is 11:59pm UK time. If you are applying outside the UK the closing time on our adverts automatically adjusts to your browsers local time zone.
As a world-leading research-intensive University, we are here to address tomorrow's greatest challenges. Between now and 2030 we will do that with a values-led approach to teaching, research and innovation, and through the strength of our relationships, both locally and globally.
Informatics is the study of how natural and artificial systems store, process and communicate information. Research in Informatics promises to take information technology to a new level, and to place information at the heart of 21st century science, technology and society. The School enjoys collaborations across many disciplines in the University, spanning all three College, and also participates as a strategic partner in the Alan Turing Institute and is home to a number of Centres for Doctoral Training.
The School provides a fertile environment for a wide range of studies focused on understanding computation in both artificial and natural systems. It attracts students around the world to study in our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Informatics is one of seven schools in the College of Science and Engineering, at the University of Edinburgh. It is recognised for the employability of its graduates, its contributions to entrepreneurship, and the excellence of its research. Since the first Research Assessment Exercise in 1986, Informatics at Edinburgh has consistently been assessed to have more internationally excellent and world-class research than any other submission in Computer Science and Informatics. The latest REF 2021 results have again confirmed that ours is the largest concentration of internationally excellent research in the UK. This contributes to our ranking of consistently being in the top 30 world-wide.
We aim to ensure that our culture and systems support flexible and family-friendly working and recognise and value diversity across all our staff and students. The School has an active programme offering support and professional development for all staff; providing mentoring, training, and networking opportunities.