The University of Wuppertal is a modern, dynamic and research-oriented campus university with interdisciplinary profile lines in research and teaching. Together, more than 26,000 researchers, teachers and students tackle challenges in society, culture, education, economics, technology, nature and the environment.

In the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Information Technology and Media Technology,
at the Institute for Technologies and Management of Digital Transformation
(Head: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Tobias Meisen),

at the earliest possible date, limited to three years,

a position as

Research assistant (doctoral candidate) in the field of Large Language Models

with 100% of the collectively agreed working hours.
(Part-time is possible, please indicate in your application whether you would also or only be interested in part-time employment)

Salary: E 13 TV-L

About us:

We are an interdisciplinary team that deals with technical, individual and social perspectives on digital transformation. Together with our research and application partners, we drive innovation and change. We make our findings available to the scientific community through publications and actively transfer them to our partners and in our educational activities. In the Semantic Systems Engineering research area, we focus on researching approaches and algorithms that enable both humans and technical systems to seamlessly collect, integrate, find, understand and process structured, semi-structured and unstructured data from different data silos and software systems. In our research focus on knowledge-enhanced language models, we are investigating in particular how large language models can be used to improve the quality of answers through the targeted use of additional knowledge bases in the form of vector databases, knowledge graphs, etc.

Professional and personal recruitment requirements:

• Completed university degree (Master's or comparable) in computer science, engineering (mechanical engineering, electrical engineering), physics, mathematics, computer linguistics or comparable courses of study
• Knowledge in the field of natural language processing, in particular large language models
• Enjoy programming, which is reflected in your CV
• Analytical and structured way of working and a high level of problem-solving skills
• Strong communication skills and ability to work in a team
• Confident demeanor, creativity and enjoyment of new technologies
• Very good written and spoken German and English skills

Your tasks include, among other things:

The call for applications is aimed at university graduates interested in a doctorate in the field of knowledge-enhanced large language models.

• Design, development and implementation of algorithms and models in the field of knowledge-enhanced large language models
• Creating, optimizing and testing input prompts (prompt engineering) for language models to increase their accuracy and efficiency
• Adaptation and fine-tuning of existing language models to specific use cases and data sets
• Development and implementation of retrieval augmented generation pipelines to improve language models by integrating external knowledge sources
• Planning, implementation and evaluation of experiments to evaluate the language models
• Presenting scientific findings in seminars, at meetings and conferences
• Promotion and development of your personal and scientific qualifications

This is a qualification position within the meaning of the Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz (WissZeitVG), which serves to promote a doctoral procedure. The position is to be filled for the duration of the doctoral procedure, but initially for up to 3 years. An extension to complete the doctorate may be possible within the time limits of the WissZeitVG.

If you have any questions, please contact Dr.-Ing. André Pomp ().

Reference number: 24218

Applications (with cover letter, CV, proof of successful completion of studies, references, proof of severe disability as a PDF file if applicable) can only be submitted via the online portal of the University of Wuppertal: https://stellenausschreibungen.uni-wuppertal.de. Incomplete applications cannot be considered!

Contact person for the cover letter is Dr.-Ing. André Pomp.

Applications from people of all genders and people with severe disabilities are welcome. Women will be given preferential consideration in accordance with the NRW State Equal Opportunities Act, unless reasons relating to the person of a competitor outweigh this. The rights of people with a severe disability to be given preferential consideration in the event of equal suitability remain unaffected.

Application deadline: 22.10.2024