The current opportunity is available to current Manchester Metropolitan University students. To apply you must be based in the UK for the duration of the role.
The main purpose of this role is to provide research support to colleagues and support staff for the LLMSecure project by assisting, and where necessary taking the lead, with research data collection and analysis, and the dissemination of findings to appropriate groups related to the project. LLMSecure is an EPSRC/CyberFocus-funded project on the security and adversarial robustness of large language models, delivered in partnership with the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust.
Support the development of new areas in the field of large language model (LLM) security and adversarial robustness — secure and trustworthy AI and natural language processing.
Dates: 21 Sept 2026 – March 2027
Hours: Up to 16 per week
Location: Manchester Metropolitan University, Department of Computing and Mathematics, Manchester — with scope for hybrid working.
Key Tasks
Research Activities
- Design, run and document adversarial robustness experiments on large language models — including prompt-injection, jailbreak and data-poisoning attacks — and evaluate candidate defences.
- Curate, annotate and pre-process text datasets for LLM security benchmarking, including clinical text from the project's NHS partner where appropriate, in line with the project's information-governance and data-protection requirements.
- Build and maintain reproducible evaluation pipelines and benchmarks for measuring LLM safety and robustness.
- Undertake empirical, experimental computational research using natural language processing and machine-learning methods (e.g. Python, PyTorch, Hugging Face Transformers), adversarial ML techniques, and standard statistical evaluation and benchmarking.
- Plan, prioritise and organise own work or resources, and the work of Research Assistants and students where appropriate, in order to achieve agreed objectives.
- Conduct literature and database searches using standard techniques and methods.
- Write up results of own research and prepare for presentation to the research team and relevant stakeholders.
- Contribute to the production of research reports and publications.
- Use initiative and judgement to develop appropriate techniques in order to facilitate research work and resolve problems affecting the achievement of objectives and deadlines.
Liaison and Networking
- Present research to the team and in appropriate articles for publication, such as academic/professional journals or conferences.
- Participate in internal and external partnerships and networks in order to aid the dissemination of research findings, to share best practice, and to enhance the reputation of the University.
Service Provision
- Proactively and effectively engage with quality assurance procedures to ensure that University standards are upheld.
- Collaborate with academic colleagues on research development and future direction.
Team Working
- Actively participate as a member of the research team, offering general help and guidance to others and PhD students who may be assisting with the research project.
- Attend Faculty, Department and Programme meetings/boards as appropriate to proactively contribute to decision making.
- Introduce new starters to the area, giving training on basic skills and activities to assist their induction to the team.
- Assist senior staff in the guidance and support of new research assistants or members of staff within the department as appropriate
Miscellaneous
- You have a legal duty, so far as is reasonably practicable, to ensure that you do not endanger yourself or anyone else by your acts or omissions. In addition, you must cooperate with the University on health and safety matters and must not interfere or misuse anything provided for health, safety and welfare purposes.
- You are responsible for applying the University's Equal Opportunities Policy in your own area of responsibility and in your general conduct.
- You have a responsibility to promote high levels of customer care within your own areas of work.
- Such other relevant duties commensurate with the grade of the post as may be assigned by the Manager in agreement with you. Such agreement should not be unreasonably withheld.
- You have the responsibility to engage with the University's commitment to Environmental Sustainability in order to reduce its waste, energy consumption and carbon footprint.
- You have the responsibility to engage with the University's commitment to delivering value for money services that optimise the use of resources and therefore should consider this when undertaking all duties and aspects of your role.