Research Assistant in Machine Learning
This position is subject to the conditions of the CREW Collective Agreement and is only available to current Concordia students.
Application deadline: June 3, 2025
Start date: June 16, 2025
End date: August 31, 2025
Salary: $30.00-$35.00 per hour
Hours per week: 15
Position title: Research Assistant
P.I. / Immediate supervisor: Nizar Bouguila
About us: The Concordia Applied AI Institute (AI2) is a multi-disciplinary applied research unit representing more than 120 faculty members and their graduate students from the 4 Concordia university faculties. AI2 is a values-driven institute, committed to engaged leadership, caring for AI’s community and consequences, and responsive to public interest. We support AI that improves, rather than maintains, the status quo. Through workshops, panel discussions, publications, and other avenues, we facilitate meaningful engagement with issues related to AI governance and adoption.
Job description: As part of the AI adoption team, you will be working on a project for the Québec provincial government that aims to develop an AI tool that uses NLP and large language models to streamline collective agreements analysis. Your responsibilities will include data preprocessing, model design and tuning, training and evaluation.
Work environment: The AI Adoption team is an interdisciplinary R&D team composed of engineers and social scientists, both full-time professionals and research assistants from the Concordia community. We collaborate with faculty members from Concordia University that provide guidance and expertise for our projects. We work closely with and develop AI-based solutions for various industries, non-for-profit organisations, and government stakeholders. Our team follows agile methodology with daily stand-up meetings within a smaller group, and a weekly sprint review and planning meeting with the whole team. We hold day-long hackathons 2-3 times a year as opportunities for collective knowledge sharing, brainstorming, and coding together. You will coordinate as a team to establish workflow and work independently to achieve project goals and deadlines. Your work will be reviewed by your supervisor, as well as fellow team members.
We enjoy working with diverse teams. We appreciate the varied outlooks and perspectives of our team members and how they shape our projects.
Qualities we admire:
Respond well to feedback
Being comfortable with self-directed learning
Problem-solving
Growth mind-set
Prioritize team over individual success
Being organized
Profile description: If you’re excited about the role and are committed to learning with and from your team members, aren’t afraid of constructive criticism, please apply! We’re more interested in finding someone who’s a great fit for our team than just checking off a list of qualifications.
You are enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate program in Computer Science or a related field at Concordia University.
You have experience with training and fine-tuning large language models (LLM) to solve natural language processing (NLP) problems.
You have experience working with large datasets of various quality.
You are proficient in Git and collaborative workflows (e.g., GitHub, GitLab).
You have a good level of spoken and written English (Level 4); good spoken and written French is a strong asset.
You have strong interpersonal and organisational skills.
You have good communication skills, and the ability to work independently and as part of a team.
Territorial Acknowledgement: Concordia University is located on unceded Indigenous lands. The Kanien’kehá:ka Nation is recognized as the custodians of the lands and waters on which we gather today. Tiohtià:ke/Montreal is historically known as a gathering place for many First Nations. Today, it is home to a diverse population of Indigenous and other peoples. We respect the continued connections with the past, present and future in our ongoing relationships with Indigenous and other peoples within the Montreal community.
Employment Equity: Concordia University is strongly committed to employment equity within its community, and to recruiting a diverse faculty and staff. The University encourages applications from all qualified candidates, including women, members of visible minorities, Indigenous persons, members of sexual minorities, persons with disabilities, and others who may contribute to diversification; candidates are invited to self-identify in their applications.
Accessibility: Concordia desires to increase diversity among its community members and we strive to make our recruitment processes as accessible as possible and provide accommodations as required for applicants. If you are contacted for an interview and anticipate needing accommodations during the process, please contact, in confidence, applied.ai@concordia.ca
How to apply: Please send your CV and cover letter to applied.ai@concordia.ca
Accommodations are available to support your success at the interview stage. Please let us know how we can mitigate barriers that would prevent you from fully participating by contacting applied.ai@concordia.ca. Your request will be held in confidence.