Research Scientist / Engineer in NLP

About Huawei Research and Development UK Limited

Founded in 1987, Huawei is a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices. We have 207,000 employees and operate in over 170 countries and regions, serving more than three billion people around the world.

Our vision and mission is to bring digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world. To this end, we will drive ubiquitous connectivity and promote equal access to networks; bring cloud and artificial intelligence to all four corners of the earth to provide superior computing power where you need it, when you need it; build digital platforms to help all industries and organizations become more agile, efficient, and dynamic; redefine user experience with AI, making it more personalized for people in all aspects of their life, whether they’re at home, in the office, or on the go.

This spirit of innovation has led Huawei to work in close partnership with leading academic institutions in the UK to develop and refine the latest technologies. With a shared commitment to innovation and progress, both parties have worked together to achieve common goals and establish a strong partnership. The partnership between UK and Huawei help to develop the technologies of the future that will transform the way we all communicate, work and live.

For the past 30 years we have maintained an unwavering focus, rejecting shortcuts and easy opportunities that don’t align with our core business. With a practical approach to everything we do, we concentrate our efforts and invest patiently to drive technological breakthroughs.

This strategic focus is a reflection of our core values:

• staying customer-centric
• inspiring dedication
• persevering
• growing by reflection

Huawei Research and Development UK Limited Overview

Huawei’s vision is a fully connected, intelligent world. To achieve this, we work to inspire passion for basic research around the world. Our combined passion drives development across the global innovation value chain. Huawei has the largest Research and Development organization in the world with 96,000+ employees in research centers around the globe. In the UK, we already have design centers in Cambridge, London, Edinburgh and Ipswich. We continue to explore and define new research directions and new services. We have expanded our collaborations with academic researchers; researched new network architectures, integration of communications and key enabling technologies; and developed the fundamental theories of these technologies. We invite you to join us on this exciting journey and drive your career forward.

Job Summary

We are looking for Research Scientists and Research Engineers with experience in Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning, and Large Language Models (LLMs)
in general. In this role, candidates will conduct both academic and applied research in the field of NLP and Machine Learning. In particular, successful candidates are expected to develop novel contributions in the fields of supervised fine-tuning, LLM self-learning, LLM efficiency, LLM-based AI agents, LLMs for Programming Languages and Math, as well as related tasks. The candidates will work on individual and team projects, while opportunities for collaborations with world-class academic organizations are provided.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead and participate in cutting-edge research projects.
• Build benchmarks/baselines using public datasets.
• Train LLMs on novel, applicable and practical tasks.
• Publish research papers at top-tier NLP/ML/AI conferences and journals.
• Mentor research interns.
• External engagement: give talks and collaborate with academic leaders.

Person Specification:

• Required:
  • Have publications in top-tier NLP/AI/ML conferences and top-tier journals.
  • Have very good knowledge of existing LLMs and evaluation frameworks.
  • Be able to convert an idea into a prototype efficiently.
  • Be result-driven with good communication skills; be able to work efficiently in a multi-cultural, multi-site, multi-language and changing environment.
  • Be able to work autonomously and as part of a team of research and technical experts.
  • Have excellent root cause analysis and problem-solving skills.
  • Be focused, pro-active and motivated.
  • Be open-minded and able to learn fast.
  • Be creative and innovative.
• Desired:
  • Have a PhD degree in Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, or related areas.
  • Have a strong research track record with publications in top-tier NLP/ML conferences including ACL, NAACL, EMNLP, EACL, NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, and top-tier journals.
  • Have experience with the most recent foundational language models, e.g. LLaMA-2, Vicuna, Mistral, WizardLM.

What we offer 

• 33 days annual leave entitlement per year (including UK public holidays)
• Group Personal Pension
• Life insurance
• Private medical insurance
• Medical expense claim scheme
• Employee Assistance Program
• Cycle to work scheme
• Company sports club and social events
• Additional time off for learning and development