LLM Engineer – AI for Neuroscience Research

About the role

VIB is expanding its AI initiative (VIB.AI) to accelerate life‑science discoveries. The LLM Engineer will work jointly with the Machine Learning Expertise Unit and the Center for Neuroscience Leuven, developing and deploying large‑language‑model solutions that address core neuroscience questions.

Key responsibilities

• Design, prototype and launch LLM‑based pilot projects for molecular, cellular and circuit neuroscience research.
• Build and maintain components of VIB’s institutional intelligence layer, including agentic bioinformatics workflows, retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) systems, and AI‑assisted experimental design tools.
• Develop methods for scientific text mining, multimodal integration of literature and biological data, and knowledge extraction.
• Collaborate with wet‑lab and computational researchers to identify high‑impact AI use‑cases.
• Scale LLM development using VIB’s high‑performance computing pipelines and large‑scale GPU resources.
• Promote ethical, transparent, and responsible use of LLMs in line with international standards.

Required profile

• PhD in machine learning, computer science, computational biology, computational neuroscience, statistics or a related discipline.
• Strong experience with large language models, including pre‑training, fine‑tuning, prompt engineering and evaluation.
• Ability to work collaboratively across interdisciplinary teams and communicate complex technical concepts to non‑technical researchers.

Required skills

• Large language model development (pre‑training, fine‑tuning, prompt engineering, evaluation)
• Deep‑learning frameworks: PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow
• High‑performance computing pipelines and large‑scale GPU resources
• Retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) techniques
• Agentic bioinformatics workflow design