Natural Language Processing Researcher

Team Description: Kitware is a leader in the creation of cutting-edge algorithms and software for automated image, video, text, and multimodal analysis. Our solutions embrace artificial intelligence adding measurable value to government agencies, commercial organizations, and academic institutions worldwide. We understand the difficulties in extracting, interpreting, and utilizing information across images, video, metadata, and text, and we recognize the need for robust, affordable solutions. We seek to advance artificial intelligence, computer vision, and other related fields through research and development and through collaborative projects that build on our open source software platforms, such as VIAME and Telesculptor. 

About the Projects:  Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Computer Vision research is increasingly interrelated, with common computational approaches and the increasing availability of text + image/video benchmarks. Several current projects leverage recent advances in large language models (LLMs), with applications to diverse domains and use cases like information extraction, decision-making, reasoning, and disinformation mitigation. Related projects entail emphasis on knowledge extraction and representation, multimodal media asset exploitation, understanding written instructions, and more. 

Kitware’s employees have unique opportunities to interact and collaborate directly with customers, visit interesting customer sites, and participate in live field tests and demonstrations. Much of Kitware’s work involves applying state-of-the-art artificial intelligence approaches to dynamic, real-world problems. In this case, you will have the opportunity to contribute your skills to projects focused on national security, making a difference on a daily basis to protect our country. Research and Development Engineers at Kitware also enjoy benefits commonly associated with a position in academia, such as support and encouragement for the publication of novel work. There are also frequent opportunities to collaborate with world renowned academic partners on ongoing research projects. 

We partner with premier government R&D agencies such as DARPA, IARPA, AFRL, NVESD, NOAA, ONR, other branches of the US military, and multiple members of the Intelligence Community on a range of efforts including prime contracts, SBIRs, and STTRs. In addition, we provide commercial services to companies ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies. Kitware employs an open source business model to foster extended, collaborative communities, and to provide flexible, high-quality technical solutions. If you’ve used CMake, ITK, or VTK, you know our work and the impact it has on the communities we help build.

In This Position You Will:

• Develop robust solutions in the areas of Natural Language Processing, Large Language Models, Foundation Models, ML, and AI.
• Develop and evaluate algorithms to understand the textual content of textual and multi-modal data, and/or perform reasoning on extracted data.
• Enjoy support and encouragement for participation in national and international NLP, machine learning, AI, and/or computer vision conferences.
• Be encouraged to seek funding to grow and develop your own research areas, if you desire.

Required Qualifications:

• PhD in Computer Science or related field.
• Strong publication history in NLP (ACL, EMNLP, NAACL) conferences, or other AI venues incorporating NLP (AAAI, ICML, ICLR, NeurIPS). Candidates should include a detailed list of publications as part of their resume/CV.
• Experience with natural language text generation, foundation models, large language models (LLMs), using one or more of GPT, Claude, BERT, or similar.
• Highly innovative and demonstrated track record for solving difficult technical challenges.
• Experience collaborating successfully with others and thriving in a fast-paced and dynamic work environment.
• Due to contractual restrictions, only US Citizens will be considered for this position.
• If not already cleared TS/SCI, willingness and ability to apply for, use, and maintain a TS/SCI security clearance.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with multiple large multimodal AI models including image, text, and speech modalities.
• Past work on adapting NLP and LLMs to different domains and applications, including decision-making, reasoning, and inference.