Research Support Officer II

Digital Europe Programme (DIGITAL)

And any other projects undertaken by the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Information and Communication Technology.

Applications are invited for a full-time Research Support Officer (RSO) to work on the NCC HPC (Malta) project. The RSO may also be required to work on other projects undertaken by the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of ICT, of the University of Malta.

Applicants must be in possession of an MSc in areas such as Artificial Intelligence, or Computer Science.

Applicants would preferably have experience in the following:

• High-performance computing, inc. GPU and C++ programming, utilities and tools used in HPC environments;
• Machine learning inc. the development and training of new models in particular transformer based ones. Experience in the Python programming language, popular ML frameworks such as TensorFlow and PyTorch. Candidates with experience designing and executing multi-phase training workloads on GPU-accelerated compute (e.g. staged pipelines combining offline pretraining with online fine-tuning stages, each with distinct compute and memory profiles) will be particularly well suited to this role;
• Experience profiling and optimising wall-clock training time and per-step throughput, managing GPU memory footprint to trade off context/sequence length against batch size, and running comparative workloads across compute budgets (equivalent sample counts, equivalent wall-clock time, equivalent gradient-update counts) on shared or dedicated accelerator hardware (e.g. DGX-class systems) is highly desirable;
• Familiarity with distributed or sweep-based hyperparameter search run at scale across many jobs, and experience with replay-buffer or in-memory data pipeline management under throughput constraints, will be considered a strong asset;
• Front and back end development;
• Experience benchmarking and reporting on compute efficiency and conducting statistically rigorous evaluation of large-scale simulation results (e.g. confidence intervals) is also a plus; and
• Teaching experience on any of the above is considered an asset.

Applicants should be self-motivated and have the ability to work both independently and as part of a team, be able to organise and prioritise tasks within the project timeline to meet interim deadlines, and possess very good oral and written communication skills.

The University of Malta is an Equal Opportunity employer.

The selected candidate must be living in Malta for the period of employment.

The full-time post is for a period until 31st March 2029. The candidate should be available to start working with immediate effect.

The initial remuneration per annum, inclusive of any cost-of-living adjustment shall be €30,327.

Candidates must upload their covering letter, curriculum vitae, and certificates (certificates should be submitted in English) and contact details of at least two referees through this form https://www.um.edu.mt/hrmd/workatum-projects by not later than Monday, 31st August 2026.

Late applications will not be considered.

Further information may be obtained from https://www.um.edu.mt/hr/recruitment/projects/ and should you have any queries, please send us an email on projects.hr@um.edu.mt

Further Information

The National Competence Centre in High-Performance Computing - NCC HPC (Malta) - is being established as a collaborative initiative bringing together key national stakeholders in advanced computing and digital innovation. Led by the Malta Digital Innovation Authority (MDIA), the NCC will align its activities with Malta’s national digital strategy while providing strategic coordination and outreach. Within this framework, the University of Malta (UM) will spearhead high-performance computing (HPC) expertise, leveraging its strong research profile, active participation in HPC initiatives, and well-established academic programmes in computational science and engineering. The collaboration aims to ensure effective coordination, long-term sustainability, and a meaningful national impact in advanced computing. The EuroCC initiative provides a strong framework and opportunity for Malta to integrate with the wider European HPC and data ecosystem. Through this alignment, the initiative seeks to build essential competencies, establish a coordinated national support structure, and enable effective access to HPC technologies. It will promote specialised education and training in advanced computing, provide support in the development of proof-of-concept and pilot activities, and ultimately enable the independent and sustainable use of HPC resources across industry, public administration, and academia. The Research Support Officer will be responsible for the execution of a number of tasks related to NCC HPC (Malta). Further information may be obtained from Dr Sandro Spina (sandro.spina@um.edu.mt).

The main duties and responsibilities of the appointee will consist of the following:

• produce software deliverables, write technical documentation, and prepare related reports within the stipulated time frames as specified in the project description;
• work with other research officers to jointly develop a pre-agreed work plan that apportions the project into a schedule of sub-tasks, which, taken together, meet all the project objectives on time;
• work flexible hours, so long as the pre-agreed sub-tasks are delivered on time and to acceptable standards, while keeping records of the actual time taken, on a task-by-task basis;
• keep detailed progress reports and abide to all the conditions imposed by the project;
• engage in the dissemination process with the relevant stakeholders via workshops/seminars and work with other research officers to jointly prepare educational material and publications;
• organise and attend regular project internal meetings and consortium meetings;
• travel and attend meetings/conferences as the need arises; and
• perform any other project-related task as instructed by the project coordinator and key experts.

The appointee will be expected to work at such places and during such hours as may be determined by the University authorities.

The selection procedure will involve:

• scrutiny of qualifications and experience claimed and supported by testimonials and/or certificates (copies to be included with the application);
• shortlisting; and
• an interview and/or extended interview.

The post is for a period until 31st March 2029, which will be subject to a probationary period and to the provisions of the Statutes, Regulations and Bye-Laws of the University of Malta which are now or which may hereafter be in force.

Office of the University

Msida, 24th August 2026