Technician in Natural Language Processing

Grade and Salary: Grade 5, £26,338 - £30,805

Contract details: 17.5 hours per week (0.5 FTE), Fixed Term for 8 months

Department: Interaction Lab, Dept of Computer Science

About our team:

The post will be in the Interaction Lab at Heriot-Watt University's School of Mathematics and Computer Science (MACS), see http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/InteractionLab. The successful candidate will join a group of about 20 people, consisting of postdoctoral and PhD researchers and faculty with expertise in NLP, NLG, Ethics in AI, Reasoning, Generative AI, Multimodal and Embodied AI, machine learning, and conversational interfaces. 
 

Further details:

The advertised position will be part of the “Gender Based Violence Online Support Buddy” project (Heriot-Watt Impact Acceleration Award). It is closely linked to the “Equally Safe Online (ESO)” EPSRC-funded project (EP/W025493/1) which seeks to employ ethical NLP and Generative AI methods for identifying and mitigating gender-based abuse online.

In this latest project, the objective is to develop a web-based online 'Support Buddy’ that will help protect social media users from gender-based violence (GBV) online in real time, using an AI classifier developed as part of the ESO project. The Support Buddy will initially take the form of a browser extension on Google Chrome that detects GBV online on X.

In collaboration with colleagues, the main duties of this position include a) developing a Chrome browser extension b) developing and refining a user interface including functionality for reporting to external services c) integrating the GBV Detection model with the browser extension d) scalability testing with hosted and local versions of the AI GBV classifier 
 

Essential Criteria:

• BEng or BSc (Hons) Computer Science awarded or nearing completion (min 2:1)
• Experience of front-end design and development (node.js, Javascript)
• Experience of working with Machine Learning models using popular deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow
   

Desirable Criteria:

• Experience of full-stack development including, for example, using AWS, Spaces ZeroGPU
   

How to Apply

Applications with FULL CV (and Cover letter) can be submitted up to midnight (UK time) on Tuesday 10 June.

For more information about the advertised position, please contact Ioannis Konstas (i.konstas@hw.ac.uk) and Nancie Gunson (n.gunson@hw.ac.uk).
 

At Heriot-Watt we are passionate about our values and look to them to connect our people globally and to help us collaborate and celebrate our success through working together. Our research programmes can deliver real world impact which is achieved through the diversity of our international community and the recognition of creative talent that connects our global team.

Our flourishing community will give you the freedom to challenge and to bring your enterprising mind and to help our partners with solutions that can be applied now and in the future. Join us and Heriot Watt will provide you with a platform to thrive and work in a way that also helps you live your life in balance with well-being and inclusiveness at the heart of our global community.

Heriot-Watt University is committed to securing equality of opportunity in employment and to the creation of an environment in which individuals are selected, trained, promoted, appraised and otherwise treated on the sole basis of their relevant merits and abilities.  Equality and diversity are all about maximising potential and creating a culture of inclusion for all.

Heriot-Watt University values diversity across our University community and welcomes applications from all sectors of society, particularly from underrepresented groups. For more information, please see our website https://www.hw.ac.uk/uk/services/equality-diversity.htm and also our award-winning work in Disability Inclusive Science Careers    https://disc.hw.ac.uk/

We welcome and will consider flexible working patterns e.g. part-time working and job share options.

About Heriot-Watt University

At Heriot-Watt we are passionate about our values and look to them to connect our people globally and to help us collaborate and celebrate our success through working together. Our research programmes can deliver real world impact which is achieved through the diversity of our international community and the recognition of creative talent that connects our global team.

Our flourishing community will give you the freedom to challenge and to bring your enterprising mind and to help our partners with solutions that can be applied now and in the future. Join us and Heriot Watt will provide you with a platform to thrive and work in a way that also helps you live your life in balance with well-being and inclusiveness at the heart of our global community.