Scientific Programmer / Post-Doctoral Researcher on Project Hippocampus: The Future of OpenML Leiden University in Netherlands

Leiden University is recruiting a Scientific Programmer / Post-Doctoral Researcher for Project Hippocampus: The Future of OpenML, a highly applied research and engineering role focused on redesigning and advancing the next generation of the OpenML platform. OpenML is an open science platform for sharing datasets, models, benchmarks, workflows, and model evaluations through open standards and structured APIs. The platform is hosted at TU Eindhoven and is used by a large international community of researchers and practitioners.

The role sits within the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) and the ADA (Automated Design of Algorithms) group, working in machine learning clusters at Leiden University. The successful candidate will help optimize accessibility for users with different experience levels, develop agentic user interfaces, strengthen OpenML’s federated position with other data and compute infrastructures such as HuggingFace and DataVerse, and contribute to maintainable code and community code review.

This is a collaborative, research-facing engineering position with strong international visibility. You will work with project members across the Netherlands and have opportunities to attend conferences and events across Europe. The advertisement highlights a supportive and ambitious environment with room to grow into open-source leadership and to further develop academic career skills, including supervision, teaching, and project management.

Funding and conditions: This is a paid postdoctoral academic staff contract, initially for one year and extendable by two more years after positive evaluation. The salary is between €3,546 and €5,538 gross per month for a 38-hour full-time appointment, with holiday allowance, end-of-year bonus, pension, public transport reimbursement, home-working support, and conference travel funding.

Eligibility highlights: The university is seeking an excellent engineer with the ability to work in a larger engineering team, experience with complex web-based code bases, and demonstrable experience with machine learning software and platforms such as OpenML, scikit-learn, or scipy. Applications must be submitted in English and should include a motivation letter, CV, GitHub portfolio, and at least two references.

Deadline: Applications are accepted until 2026-10-15, and the vacancy notes that applications will be reviewed as they arrive, so early submission is encouraged. The preferred start date is 2026-09-01, negotiable.