Ingénieur scientifique contractuel

About the center or functional department

Created in 2008, the Inria Saclay Center is located at the heart of the Paris-Saclay scientific and technological excellence cluster, which alone accounts for 15% of French research. Serving the development of the Université Paris-Saclay and the Institut Polytechnique de Paris, the Inria Saclay center employs 80 people in research support services and 500 scientists of 54 nationalities.

Benefiting from continuous growth, the center now has a total of 42 project-teams and two in the process of being created, including 21 jointly with the Institut Polytechnique de Paris and 16 with the Université Paris-Saclay.

Context and advantages of the position

We are a small team of PhD students, post-docs and permanent members interested into Frugal AI, with expertise in machine learning, optimization, open-source library managing, etc.

We have a GPU cluster, and the national cluster Jean Zay is available as well (with ~3000 GPU cards).

This project is part of a European project, named MANOLO.

Mission assigned

The person recruited will work on Frugal AI, and more precisely on Neural Architecture Growth, both on theoretical and practical aspects, to be able to develop architectures that develop on the fly while training and thus spare computational resources needed by classical Neural Architecture Search (whether manual or automated).

More precisely, the topic will be to develop, implement and test reinforcement learning approaches for neural architecture growth. The person recruited is expected to follow the literature on this topic and suggest development directions.

Main activities

The main task is to contribute to theoretical developments of the topic (optimization, searching for growth strategies), to the open-source library of the team, and to the team's social and daily life.

It is also expected to take part to writing papers and deliverables that are required by the European project, which correspond to the advancement of the state of the project.

Skills

Expected skills :

• machine learning (neural networks...)
• reinforcement learning (policy gradient using neural networks, ...)
• maths (statistics, analysis, etc.)
• optimization (gradient descent, ...)
• programming (python, PyTorch)

Benefits

• Subsidized meals
• Partial reimbursement of public transport costs
• Leave: 7 weeks of annual leave + 10 extra days off due to RTT (statutory reduction in working hours) + possibility of exceptional leave (sick children, moving home, etc.)
• Possibility of teleworking and flexible organization of working hours
• Professional equipment available (videoconferencing, loan of computer equipment, etc.)
• Social, cultural and sports events and activities
• Access to vocational training
• Social security coverage

Compensation

From 2 692€ gross per month, depending on qualifications and experience.

General information

• Theme/Field: Optimization, learning and statistical methods Statistics (Big data) (BAP E)
• City: Gif sur Yvette
• Inria Center: Centre Inria de Saclay
• Desired start date: 2026-06-01
• Contract duration: 4 months
• Application deadline: 2026-05-31

Application instructions

To apply, please provide :

• CV
• Cover letter
• Letter(s) of recommendation, where applicable

Security defense:

This position may be assigned to a restricted zone (ZRR), as defined by decree n°2011-1425 relating to the protection of the scientific and technical potential of the nation (PPST). Access authorization to a zone is granted by the head of the institution, after favorable ministerial opinion, as defined in the order of July 3, 2012, relating to the PPST. An unfavorable ministerial opinion for a position assigned to a ZRR would result in the cancellation of the recruitment.

Recruitment policy:

As part of its diversity policy, all Inria positions are accessible to people with disabilities.

Contacts

• Inria Team: TAU
• Recruiter: Charpiat Guillaume / Guillaume.Charpiat@inria.fr

The essential for success

Motivated to work on Frugal AI with a small team including PhD students, post-docs, and permanent researchers.

About Inria

Inria is the national research institute dedicated to digital sciences and technologies. It employs 2600 people. Its 215 agile project-teams, generally shared with academic partners, involve more than 3900 scientists to meet the challenges of digital technology, often at the interface of other disciplines. The institute calls on numerous talents in more than forty different professions. 900 support staff for research and innovation contribute to the emergence and growth of scientific or entrepreneurial projects that impact the world. Inria works with numerous companies and has supported the creation of more than 200 start-ups. The institute thus strives to respond to the challenges of the digital transformation of science, society and the economy.