Senior/Lead NLP/ML Researcher

Why Iris.ai

At Iris.ai, we’re building an agentic AI platform that scales expert-level domain knowledge across entire organizations.

For more than a decade, we’ve worked at the intersection of scientific research, industrial data, and applied AI, helping researchers, engineers, and business teams reason over complex technical knowledge.

Our products - Neuralith, Axion, and RSpace - span the full GenAI lifecycle:

Data ingestion across text, tables, figures, and technical formatsAdvanced RAG and indexing pipelinesAgentic orchestration and reasoningRigorous LLM evaluation and governance

What makes us different: we care deeply about accuracy, evaluation, and responsibility. We don’t optimize for demos and proof-of-concepts we optimize for systems that experts trust and use.

The Role

We’re looking for a Senior/Lead LLM Researcher to lead Iris.ai’s research around LLM evaluation, model interpretability, and mechanistic interpretation of LLMs.

You’ll define and drive research into how we evaluate, understand, and measure the reliability of LLMs - from answer quality and groundedness to uncertainty, confidence, and model behaviour.

This is a research and leadership role with a strong applied focus. You’ll shape research directions, lead experimentation, and work closely with our engineering and product teams to turn research into products used within the Iris.ai platform.

You’ll also participate in shaping projects for EU and national research funding, leading and co-authoring grant proposals such as Horizon Europe and EIC.

What You’ll Research

You’ll work on a focused set of high‑impact research directions that sit at the core of modern applied NLP\ML\LLM and agentic systems. You will be making LLM-based systems measurable, interpretable, and trustworthy. The core aspects include:

LLM evaluation — model grounding (in context, following instructions, following domain knowledge), faithfulness, and task adherence.Mechanistic interpretation - analyzing model behaviour during inference. All our metrics are focused on real-time analysis so they require model analysis during inference, not another LLM call.Model interpretability — understanding and explaining model behaviour and outputs.Uncertainty & confidence — identifying when outputs can be trusted and when they cannot.Evaluation frameworks — developing scalable methods for comparing models, prompts, agents, and whole agentic systemsAgentic reasoning & control — understanding when models should reason, stop reasoning, or act, including inference‑time steeringTranslation & multilingual NLP — evaluation and system design for modern LLM‑based translation, including low‑resource languages

Your goal will be turning rigorous research into capabilities that real users can trust and use.

What You’ll Do

Lead Iris.ai’s research direction around LLM evaluation and interpretabilityDesign novel evaluation methods, metrics, and experimental frameworksRun rigorous experiments, benchmarking, and ablation studiesTranslate research into prototypes and production capabilitiesProvide scientific guidance to researchers and engineersCollaborate closely with product and engineering teamsPublish research and engage with the AI research communityLead and co-author EU and national research grant proposalsWrite and publish research articlesSupervise interns and master thesis students

Our Tech Stack

Languages: Python (strong OOP practices)ML: PyTorch, Transformers, TensorFlowLLMs: Hugging Face, OpenAI, custom and fine‑tuned modelsSystems: RAG pipelines, Multi-agent frameworks, Evaluation toolsInfra: AWS, Docker, HPCPractices: Git, CI/CD, reproducible research workflows

What We’re Looking For

PhD in ML, NLP, Computer Science, or a related fieldStrong, hands‑on experience with R&D grants and proposal writing (e.g. Horizon Europe, EIC, national or international research funding)5+ years of industry or applied research experienceStrong background in NLP (transformers, semantic search, RAG)Hands‑on experience with LLMs and their evaluationSolid software engineering skills and experience with PythonPublications in ML/NLP conferences or journalsAble to work within European time zones

🌱Why Join Iris.ai?

If you want to do meaningful NLP work, help secure funding for frontier AI research, and grow in a culture built on trust, rigor, and fairness — let’s talk.

We’re not your typical tech company. We believe in:

Real transparency — information is shared, context is open, and questions are welcome.Fairness, designed in policies, opportunities, and growth are aligned across countries and teams.Ownership and empoweredness to make decisions without micromanagement.Metrics that guide us — but they never replace human thinking or responsibility

Compensation & Ownership

Pay

Compensation that reflects your value. Our salaries are typically 25% above local market averages, ensuring competitive, fair pay across regions and roles. And we review it annually.

Equity

We believe salary helps you get by. Stock options build wealth. At Iris.ai all colleagues receive ownership in the company, part of our ESOP pool (3%). Because when we grow, you grow — that's what shared success really means.

(Just imagine: Someone once bought a Tesla option for $1 — it's worth $400 today.)

Benefits

We’ve built our benefits to reflect how we work: with trust, fairness, and room to grow.

30 days paid vacation5 additional days paid vacation for Learning and DevelopmentPrivate health insurance (premium coverage) and bi-annual health checksFree MultiSport card for your physical well-beingRemote-first & flexible hours — work where you're at your bestPersonal annual learning budget for conferences, courses, or certificationsPersonal equipment budget to choose the gear that suits your styleCharity and volunteer activitiesSeasonal working camps (summer & winter) and team retreatsOngoing growth through weekly tech deep dives, mentorship, pair coding, and knowledge-sharing

🚀 Let’s Build the Future of Responsible AI

If you care about building high-quality, ethical AI — guided by data and human judgment — you’ll feel at home at Iris.ai.

👉 Apply now or reach out with questions. We’re transparent by default.