Applying for permanent researcher positions at ALMAnaCH

Contact Benoît Sagot (head of the team): benoit.sagot[at]inria.fr

Interested in carrying out top quality NLP research in a stimulating and friendly environment in the centre of Paris?

The ALMAnaCH project-team at Inria, Paris (France) is looking for candidates for full-time permanent researchers in natural language processing (NLP), digital humanities and/or machine learning with application to NLP. We welcome profiles for both junior and senior positions.

Inria

Inria is the French national research institute for digital science and technology. World-class research, and, where relevant, transfer to industry and start-up creation are its main missions. Research is structured into “project-teams”, spread across nine research centres across France, including the Paris research centre, which the ALMAnaCH team is part of.

Description of the ALMAnaCH team

The ALMAnaCH team (Automatic Language Modelling and Analysis & Computational Humanities) focuses on Natural Language Processing (NLP), a key area within Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Digital Humanities (DH), at the crossroads between theoretical computer science, machine learning, and linguistics. The team's work covers a wide variety of topics related to language variation, both in a historical sense and within contemporary language states (developing robust NLP systems for noisy web content and dialectal varieties of language). Our interests also span to the training of neural networks (e.g. CamemBERT model), interpretability of neural approaches, language resource development (e.g. OSCAR corpus, treebanks, parallel datasets, lexicons, extension to multimodality (vision, speech), but also historical corpora built using OCR (optical character recognition) and HTR (handwritten text recognition) applied to archives and other historical documents), evaluation and information extraction and retrieval (especially from specialised corpora and historical documents).

You can meet the team and discover our current projects here: http://almanach.inria.fr

Although research will be your principal activity, if you wish to also create your own startup, you will be readily supported by Inria. Notably, Inria has its own startup studio dedicated to accompanying Inria researchers in the creation of their startups. Also, you will be able to carry out consulting and/or teaching activities.

Upon arrival, junior permanent researchers will receive a welcome package including a full PhD grant and 15000€ for expenses.

Profiles sought

We are especially (although not exclusively) interested in candidates specialised in:

  • Digital humanities (DH) and the application of NLP techniques and corpus creation and management for DH;
  • Contemporary NLP using machine learning and deep learning approaches, ideally also with an interest or a background in linguistics.

Requirements and expectations

  • Candidates must have a PhD in computer science (or another area related to NLP, with a strong computer science background), and relevant research experience.
  • They must be highly motivated to pursue a career in public research in France, while being open to working on the application of their research in industrial contexts, including by the creation of start-up companies.
  • The research programme proposed by candidates must fit in with the team's interests while extending the scope of the team's research themes, collaborations and perspectives.
  • Both French and international applications are welcome. A good level of English is required (French language ability is not a requirement).
  • No teaching experience is required, although it can be a plus, especially for ISFP positions (see below).
  • A significant supervision and team or project management experience is required for the senior positions (any such experience is a plus for junior positions, but not a requirement). If you come from a country where “habilitation” exists (e.g. France), you must have one to apply for a senior position.

Calendar and process

Your application will be examined as part of an Inria-wide yearly recruiting process (competitive selection campaign). The application deadline for 2023 recruitments is the 5th March for all positions.

If you are interested in joining the team, you should contact Benoît Sagot (benoit.sagot[at]inria.fr) by the end of 2022, i.e. early enough for the team to decide whether or not they would support your application and, if so, to discuss research interests and to prepare your application. More information can be found on the Inria recruitment page.

Salary and benefits

The exact salary is determined by your classification within a certain grade level, which is determined by qualifications and previous experience. There are also additional bonuses and allowances. There are three types of possible positions you can apply for, which are all permanent positions:

  • Chargé de recherches (CRCN):
    • Full-time research fellow (civil servant)
    • The gross annual salary of a CRCN is between €31,214 (grade 1) and €52,555 (grade 10), depending on qualifications and previous experience
  • Inria starting faculty position (ISFP):
    • Full-time research fellow with a light feature load (permanent contract, but not civil servant)
    • The gross annual remuneration of an ISFP is
      • €44,664 upon hiring if the candidate has up to 3 years post-PhD experience
      • €51,552 upon hiring if the candidate has more than 3 years post-PhD experience
      • + additional payment linked to teaching hours
  • Directeur de recherches (DR2):
    • Full-time senior research fellow (civil servant)
    • The gross annual salary of a DR1 is between €42,784 and €66,762, depending on qualifications and previous experience

N.B. As stated above, you can also do consulting to complement your salary.

All positions also come with additional benefits including:

  • Subsidised meals and transport and reduction of private health insurance, which complements the already generous public health insurance scheme you will automatically have the right to.
  • Generous leave (7 weeks annual leave + 5 additional days off + 5 more additional days off at dates fixed by Inria or Inria Paris + all French bank holidays).
  • Possibility of teleworking (partial: 90 days per year, maximum of 13 days per month) and flexible organisation of work hours.
  • Generous pension scheme.
  • Access to vocational training.
  • Social, cultural and sporting events and activities.

More detailed information

You can find more detailed information on the Inria website. If you are interested, you are highly encouraged to contact us to have an informal discussion.