AI Engineer

IFOM is an internationally recognized non-profit cancer research institute supported by the Italian Association for Cancer Research (AIRC) based in Milan within a highly dynamic urban environment

IFOM continuous success is ensured by the recruitment of highly selected undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate researchers from over 24 countries worldwide.

IFOM is hosted within a research campus shared with the European Institute of Oncology and the Italian Institute of Technology.

IFOM is committed to creating a safe and inclusive environment, based on mutual respect and the enhancement of diversity, offering equal job opportunities to all qualified candidates.

We seek for our Institute: AI Engineer

Candidate will report directly to the Head of Research Computing & Data Science and will be responsible for designing, prototyping, and deploying AI-enabled services — with a strong focus on Large Language Models and generative AI — that support IFOM’s scientific activities and internal operations, working across a hybrid landscape that includes on-premises infrastructure, cloud environments, managed AI services and APIs, and academic computing resources.

We are looking for a candidate whose level of seniority will be assessed primarily on demonstrated skills and hands-on experience; both early-career and more experienced profiles are welcome.

Candidate will be responsible for:

• Designing and delivering AI-enabled services that support IFOM’s scientific activities and internal operations, including LLM applications, RAG systems, agent-assisted workflows, document and knowledge workflows, NLP pipelines, and other tools that can be operated as shared services.
• Working with colleagues across Research Computing & Data Science, IT/ICT, and scientific units to understand needs, prototype solutions quickly, and evolve promising ideas into reliable services.
• Applying software engineering discipline to AI work: version-controlled code, prompts, data, and models; reproducible environments; automated workflows; clear documentation.
• Evaluating open-source and commercial models and services, including managed APIs and biomedical/clinical models (e.g., BioBERT, PubMedBERT, MedGemma, Meditron, and similar), and assessing where they may be appropriate for internal research support in line with technical, governance, and compliance considerations.
• Contributing to the deployment and operation of AI services across on-premises infrastructure, cloud environments, managed AI services and APIs, and academic computing resources.
• Helping adopt good engineering and MLOps practices for evaluation, monitoring, versioning, and maintainability, in proportion to the maturity and criticality of each service.
• Working closely with the Research HPC Engineer to integrate AI workloads into the internal computing platform, and with the Bioinformatics Engineer to make AI tools accessible and easy to use for the research community.
• Interfacing effectively with the ICT department on infrastructure, security, networking, and integration topics.
• Producing clear technical documentation and contributing to internal training for scientific, technical, and operational stakeholders.

Qualification

• Strong proficiency in Python, including familiarity with the ML ecosystem (e.g., PyTorch, Hugging Face), and solid software development habits.
• Solid fundamentals in machine learning and deep learning.
• Hands-on experience (academic, personal, or professional) with LLMs and modern AI tooling, such as RAG patterns, prompt engineering, vector databases, and application frameworks such as LangChain or LlamaIndex.
• Comfort working in Linux environments, using Git, and building reproducible development workflows.
• Containerization: Docker and Apptainer (Singularity); working knowledge of Kubernetes.
• Interest in cloud-based AI services and APIs, and in understanding the technical and operational trade-offs associated with their use.

Nice to have

• Exposure to managed AI services, cloud-based AI APIs, or commercial cloud environments.
• Familiarity with open-source or self-hosted model serving solutions.
• Experience with HPC environments and workload schedulers such as SLURM.
• Exposure to MLOps tools for experiment tracking, evaluation, CI/CD, or model lifecycle management.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes, Infrastructure-as-Code, or deployment automation.
• Experience with fine-tuning, quantization, evaluation methodologies, or agentic / tool-using LLM workflows.
• Background or applied experience in biomedical / life sciences domains (appreciated, not required).

Education

A master’s degree (or a bachelor’s degree with equivalent demonstrable experience) in Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, Mathematics, Data Science, or a related quantitative field.

Languages

Advanced proficiency in spoken and written English;

Soft Skills

Learning and teamwork attitudes; problem Solving; good interpersonal skills; empathy; curiosity and learning agility; engineering rigor and a service mindset; ownership and reliability; ability to collaborate across scientific, engineering, and IT/ICT functions and to translate scientific needs into accessible technical solutions; clear written and verbal communication.

What we offer

International work environment; Continuous training; Flextime; Guest house inside the Campus; Agreements with discounts for Gym, Pharmacy, Psychology service and various shops around Ifom area; Bar and canteen inside the campus & lunch benefit;

Company Nursery; Continuous support to candidates and their families (including homing, schooling, registration to the national health system, work permit etc.) thanks to the activities of the Welcome office; Medical Service; Laptop; Caf service- tax declaration;

Lab G: it is a lab specifically designed for pregnant or breastfeeding women researchers.

Type of Contract

Permanent contract, full time - CCNL Chimico Farmaceutico

Compensation: €45,000 – €55,000 gross annual salary, based on experience.

Location

Milan - Scalo di Porta Romana area

Contact Details

If you are interested in this opportunity, please submit you CV and a letter of interest to: .

This announcement is addressed to both sexes pursuant to Laws 903/77 and 125/91 and to people of all ages and nationalities pursuant to Legislative Decrees 215/03 and 216/03.

Disclaimer privacy

Article 13 of the EU Regulation 2016/679) We inform you that the archiving and processing of data referring to you are carried out by IFOM - Istituto Fondazione di Oncologia Molecolare ETS in order to perform the recruitment process. Pursuant to Article 6(1)(b) the legal basis for the processing is the necessity to take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract. Your data shall be communicated to third parties that could be located in countries outside the European Union for the recruitment process. IFOM has obtained the necessary guarantees to transfer the Data in compliance with the provisions of Chapter V of the GDPR. The resumes received will be deleted at the end of the calendar year following the one of receipt; if you are still interested in proposing your application you will have to re-send. According to Article 15 et seq of the EU Regulation 2016/679 to exercise your rights you can write to the Data Controller: IFOM - Istituto Fondazione di Oncologia Molecolare ETS, via Adamello 16, Milano, .

Finally, we inform you that IFOM has appointed a Data Protection Officer (DPO) who can be contacted at