Machine Learning Consultant

Do you want to work in an innovative and exciting environment? Would you like to contribute to new developments in artificial intelligence? Do you find it important to support research and education in the Netherlands? Are you also a consultant who will design and develop privacy enhancing technology solutions? Then you can participate in (inter)national research and generally support our user community from the SURF Machine Learning team. Please continue reading.

Where you will work

SURF is the ICT cooperative for Dutch educational and research institutions. Together with them, we work on digital services and complex innovation challenges to enhance the quality of education and research. SURF makes a social impact with your work. We have more than a hundred members: universities, hospitals, and research institutes such as the RIVM and the KNMI. You help them innovate.

Within SURF, the department Compute Services is responsible for the national supercomputer Snellius. Our users are researchers and educators at Dutch Universities, members, as well as international research institutes.

The team you will join

As a machine learning consultant at SURF, you will be part of the department’s operational team, collaborating with the research and education communities to develop a set of services around artificial intelligence solutions. You will support the development of machine learning workflows (through performance optimization, scaling and algorithmic changes involved) and help co-design specific projects with relevant partners. You stay up to date with the latest machine learning development and spot opportunities for collaborations with our members. We actively disseminate our expertise to the scientific community, usually through publications, courses, webinars and public lectures.

Working at SURF means working for a unique and open organization. This is evident in everything: the structure of the organization, the setup of the project teams, the culture in our offices, and the atmosphere among colleagues. SURF offers excellent terms of employment and takes a flexible approach to work/life balance. Employees enjoy working independently. In addition, everyone is given the space and freedom to use and develop their talents as effectively and broadly as possible.

What you will do

You spend most of your time participating in large national consortia. This consortium improve privacy enhanced technologies and you support the execution of use cases within the consortium. Doing so, you will get support from two other privacy enhancing experts and a project leader. Together you will share your findings and results with the machine learning team. A smaller amount of your time will be spent working in the machine learning team and actively contributing to the SURF roadmap developments including privacy enhanced technology.

What else you are involved in

• You interact with academic, public and private stakeholders in order to support research and education.
• You co-develop and benchmark research software on large scale and specialized computing and data infrastructures.
• You are participating in projects at the intersection of high-performance computing, cloud computing, artificial intelligence with a focus on privacy enhancing technologies, infrastructure and with multiple stakeholders in the health care domain.
• You are consulting on high-level discussions about standards and architecture for AI projects.
• You shape the SURF roadmap for privacy enhancing technologies by sharing your knowledge and ideas.
• You are participating in outreach activities that could involve developing course materials, teaching, hosting webinars, organizing hackathons, disseminating scientific and engineering results, releasing public code, etc.
• You keeping up to date with relevant information in the fields of machine learning and HPC to find bridges to SURF’s activities within operation, education and research.

Your skills and experience

• Your skills include practical problem solving and the ability to think through technical problems and the ability to work in a multidisciplinary environment would be highly valued.
• You have a strong interest in machine learning and the ability to apply its principles to specific scenarios. You enjoy working in an independent manner and can work in a diverse team.
• You have excellent interpersonal and communicative skills and a good spoken and written command of English. You’re analytically strong and proactive.
• An academic level of thinking and working: (MSc/PhD level) in artificial intelligence, computer science, mathematics or other related technical fields. This can be equated to professional experience.
• You have a deep understanding of at least Vantage6-framework and Flower. In addition you have proven experience in developing Federated learning frameworks.
• You are familiar with other Federated learning solutions currently used in the Netherlands. You have strong interest in the application of artificial intelligence to solve real problems in research and in education.
• You have programming experience (at least C/C++/Java and/or Python). In addition, you have knowledge of UNIX/Linux knowledge. At least you have knowledge of scripting languages (e.g. shell scripting, Perl).

Finally, we strongly advise you to only apply to this vacancy if you satisfy all listed criteria above.

Prior to starting this job, a VOG must be presented.

SURF takes pleasure in doing its recruitment itself; acquisition is therefore not appreciated.