Senior Research Associate - AI for Weather Forecasting

Hours: 36

Closes: Monday 25^th August at 23:59 (LONDON, UK, BST)

The Alan Turing Institute

Named in honour of Alan Turing, the Institute is a place for inspiring, exciting work and we need passionate, sharp, and innovative people who want to use their skills to contribute to our mission to make great leaps in data science and AI research to change the world for the better.

Please find more information about us here

Background

The Turing has recently undergone a restructuring and is now operating a challenge-led model with three Grand Challenges (Environment & Sustainability, Health, Defence & National Security), underpinned by cross-cutting Fundamental Research. 

In the Environment & Sustainability Grand Challenge, we will develop machine learning and AI as a transformative technology to benefit planet and people, AI is already transforming how we approach weather forecasting.

The Environment and Sustainability Grand Challenge’s Aardvark Weather project, led by Prof Richard Turner, is spearheading the development of end-to-end AI weather forecasting systems, that learn to produce predictions directly from raw observational data (for more information see here).

Candidate profile

We are seeking a highly skilled Senior Research Associate who will be key to conducting internationally leading research in machine learning for Earth system prediction for the Aardvark project.

We are particularly interested in candidates with experience in: vision language models, Earth system forecasting, spatio-temporal modelling, and deep generative modelling, such as diffusion and flow-matching. The candidate should have strong software engineering skills.

The candidate will join a vibrant team of researchers and will have opportunities to engage with internal and external stakeholders throughout the delivery of the project.

Duties and areas of responsibility

• Play a leading role in undertaking high-quality research, actively contributing, and steering the broader research aims of the Environment & Sustainability Grand Challenge.
• Provide technical leadership for research projects, ensuring successful outcomes, including that research outcomes can be deployed in the real world.
• Contribute to software development including planning, execution and package release and management
• Contribute to mission-led research in collaboration with team members and Principal Investigators(PIs).
• Be a point of contact, supporting PIs in engaging with stakeholders regarding projects and deputising in meetings where necessary.

Person specification

The successful candidate will have a PhD (or equivalent experience/qualifications) in a relevant area, e.g. machine learning, AI computer science, mathematics, statistics, physics or engineering.

In addition, they will have experience in machine learning and AI, including experience in machine learning software development and experience in training and applying vision-language models and/or large language models.

Please see our portal for a full breakdown of the Job Description.

Terms and conditions

This full-time post is offered on a fixed-term basis until 30 June 2029. Part-time(0.8FTE) applications can be considered.  The annual salary for this role is £56,840 plus excellent benefits, including flexible working and family friendly policies, Employee-only benefits guide | The Alan Turing Institute

Application procedure

Please see our jobs portal for full details on how to apply and the interview process.

Equality Diversity and Inclusion

We are committed to making sure our recruitment process is accessible and inclusive.

This includes making reasonable adjustments for candidates who have a disability or long-term condition. Please contact us at adjustments@turing.ac.uk  to find out how we can assist you.

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