Italy
Commitment & contract: Fixed term contract 12 months with extension option
Location: Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia - Center for Robotics and Intelligent Systems, Via S. Quirico, 19d, 16163 Genova GE.
Step into a world of endless possibilities, together let’s leave something for the future!
At IIT, we are committed to advancing human-centered Science and Technology to address the most urgent societal challenges of our era. We foster excellence in both fundamental and applied research, spanning fields such as neuroscience and cognition, humanoid technologies and robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and material sciences, offering a truly interdisciplinary scientific experience. Our approach integrates cutting-edge tools and technology, empowering researchers to push the limits of knowledge and innovation. With us, your curiosity will know no bounds.
We are dedicated to providing equal employment opportunities and fostering diversity in all its forms, creating an inclusive environment. We value the unique experiences, knowledge, backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives of our people. By embracing diversity, we believe science can achieve its fullest potential.
THE ROLE
You will be working in the Humanoid Sensing and Perception (HSP) research unit coordinated by Dr. Lorenzo Natale, a multicultural and multi-disciplinary group that focuses on humanoid robotics and in particular AI, machine vision, tactile sensing and software architectures for robotics.
The HSP research line is seeking to appoint a full-time Generative AI / Machine Learning Engineer to contribute to the development of new technologies for cutting edge multimodal and vision systems in the context of an industrial project in collaboration with Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Large multimodal and specifically vision-language models achieve unprecedented capabilities of general reasoning and perception, especially when empowered with specialized tools. While their application theoretically can span a wide variety of domains, several challenges arise when employing them in practice for specific tasks or scenarios. This project carries out innovative research on methods for the fast adaptation of large vision-language agentic models, including supervised and reinforcement learning.
The project team at HSP is responsible for all the phases of the research development and within the team your responsibilities and duties will require to contribute to each phase via close collaboration with team members and a focus that can depend on your expertise and attitude:
- Carrying out literature reviews to propose promising approaches for identified problems.
- Contributing to the design of ad hoc solutions for the development of a system prototype and related data pipelines.
- Contributing to the implementation, benchmarking, documentation and delivery of the system via repository-based collaborative software development.
- Contributing to custom data collection, curation and annotation.
- Frequent technical reporting
- Contributing to team activity planning
ESSENTIAL REQUIREMENTS
- Master’s degree in computer science, computer engineering or related fields with excellent overall score.
- Strong programming skills (Python or C/C++) with experience in systems engineering and software development.
- Solid knowledge of both basic and modern methods in machine learning, NLP and computer vision, including supervised and reinforcement learning, visual recognition, vision-language models and generative models.
- Good in time and priority management; Strong problem-solving attitude; Creative, proactive and collaborative attitude; Ability to work autonomously in a highly interdisciplinary environment; High motivation to learn.
- Good communication skills; proficiency in English language (written and oral).
ADDITIONAL SKILLS
- A PhD in relevant field (machine learning, robotics, computer science or equivalent) or documented experience (strong publication record, prior roles) working in machine learning and computer vision research projects in industry or academia in a mid/senior or junior role.
- Documented experience in the development of modern machine learning pipelines, data pipelines and computer vision systems, using deep learning libraries and LLM stack for local and cloud deployment (e.g., PyTorch, Hugging Face Transformers and other libraries, LMDeploy, Chroma, Ollama, LangChain, MS Azure, OpenAI, Google Gemini…).
- Experience with Linux OS and related programming tools and environments.
- Experience with maintaining code repositories and code and data versioning (e.g., Git).
- Experience with HPC (e.g., Singularity, Docker, Slurm).
- Experience in scientific reporting and research project management.
- Experience in large-scale data collection, curation and annotation.
COMPENSATION PACKAGE
- Competitive salary package for international standards, which will be commensurate with qualifications and experience and can include bonus option depending on your role and contract.
- Private health care coverage.
- Up to ten days of teleworking per month.
- Flexible working time.
- Wide range of staff discounts.
Please submit your application using the online form and including a detailed CV, university transcripts, a cover letter (outlining motivation, experience and qualifications), and any documents demonstrating previous relevant working experience related to the position duties.
The position is **Open until filled.