King's College London

About us

King’s College London (KCL) is an internationally renowned university for its excellence in research, education, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

The Department of Informatics at KCL is seeking to recruit a Postdoctoral Research Associate (PDRA) in Large Language Models, based in the Natural Language Processing (NLP) group. The NLP group is internationally recognised for its work on integrating machine learning with natural language understanding, including large language models, and maintains strong links to real-world applications in education, healthcare, and beyond.

About the role

Applications are invited for a Postdoctoral Research Associate (PDRA) position on the EPSRC Prosperity Partnership project ‘AI-enabled High Stakes Assessment’ jointly between King’s College London (KCL) and AQA, the largest exam board in the UK for GCSE and A-level exams. This collaborative project aims to enhance the quality of secondary school qualifications (e.g. GCSE and A-level) by developing a cutting-edge, modular AI system powered by Large Language Models (LLMs). Combining AQA's expertise in assessment with KCL's proficiency in LLMs, the project represents an interdisciplinary effort. 

Two PDRAs will be appointed for this project, one based at AQA while another at KCL. This position, based at KCL, will focus on key tasks such as improving the faithfulness of LLM reasoning in student answer assessment, integrating human cognitive theories of assessment into LLM model training, and developing meta-reasoning approaches to enable continuous LLM learning in assessment contexts. The successful candidate will collaborate closely with the AQA project team and have opportunities to build their research profile through demos, presentations, and academic publications.

Candidates should hold a PhD in Computer Science or a related discipline and demonstrate strong skills in natural language processing and large language models. Knowledge of educational theories and human-computer interaction would be advantageous. 

This is a full time post (35 hours per week), and you will be offered a fixed term contract for 24 months or until 17th August 2028, whichever is earlier.

Research staff at King’s are entitled to at least 10 days per year (pro-rata) for professional development. This entitlement, from the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers, applies to Postdocs, Research Assistants, Research and Teaching Technicians, Teaching Fellows and AEP equivalent up to and including grade 7. Visit the Centre for Research Staff Development for more information.

About you

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

1.       PhD in Natural Language Processing (NLP), Artificial Intelligence or a very closely related discipline.

2.       Strong research tracked record in NLP and LLMs as evidenced by publications in high quality journals and top tier conferences.

3.       Sufficient breadth or depth of specialist knowledge in the discipline and of research methods and techniques to work within established research programmes.

4.       Demonstrated ability to conduct independent research.

5.       Good effective communication (both oral and written) skills.

6.       Ability to write research reports and papers accessible to both academic and lay audiences.

7.       Ability to work collaboratively in an interdisciplinary research environment.

8.       Ability to initiate, plan, organise, implement and deliver programmes of work to tight deadlines.  

Desirable criteria

1.     Experience with LLM alignment, reasoning, interpretability, or continual learning.

2.     Experience in human-in-the-loop AI or evaluation of AI systems in real-world settings.

3.     Ability or potential to contribute to the development of funding proposals in order to generate external funding to support research projects

Downloading a copy of our Job Description 

Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, provided at the bottom of the page. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.

* Please note that this is a PhD level role but candidates who have submitted their thesis and are awaiting award of their PhDs will be considered. In these circumstances the appointment will be made at Grade 5, spine point 30 with the title of Research Assistant. Upon confirmation of the award of the PhD, the job title will become Research Associate and the salary will increase to Grade 6. 

Further Information

At King’s, we believe that the diversity of our community and a culture that is welcoming, open, inclusive and collaborative, are great strengths of the university.

The Equality Act of 2010 protects the rights of our students and staff and provides a framework to fulfil our duties to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and in addition, to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between those who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. At times, this will include balancing rights and beliefs that can feel in tension.

We are committed to free speech and to academic freedom, believing that our foundational purpose as a university, is to create spaces where a wide range of ideas, including ideas that are controversial, can be discussed and debated, and where members of our community can express lawful views without fear of intimidation, harassment or discrimination.

When engaging in the robust exchange of ideas, we ask that our community is mindful of our Dignity at King’s guidance.

We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the person specification section of the job description. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

We reserve the right to close adverts early due to the volume of applications we receive. While the closing date may change, all adverts will close at 23:59 to allow sufficient time for applications to be submitted on that day.

We encourage you to apply at the earliest opportunity to avoid disappointment as once we have closed a vacancy you will be unable to submit your application.

To find out how our managers will review your application, please take a look at our ‘How we Recruit’ pages.