Postdoctoral Research Assistant(s) in Fundamental AI Research

We are seeking two full-time Postdoctoral Research Assistants to join the BOLD Lab at the Department of Engineering Science (central Oxford).  The post is funded by EPSRC and is fixed-term for 12 months. 

 

This is an opportunity to join The British Open-ended Learning and Discovery (BOLD) Lab, a major new UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funded initiative that will establish a world-leading AI research laboratory at the University of Oxford. Bringing together more than 80 researchers from Oxford, UCL and Imperial under one unified vision, BOLD Lab will pursue ambitious, high-risk research to advance the fundamental science of artificial intelligence and address some of the field's most important challenges. You will be responsible for researching and developing novel algorithms and techniques to achieve the project’s objectives, with a particular emphasis on efficient and safe learning approaches for collaborative multi-agent reinforcement learning tasks. You will contribute to advancing BOLD’s research capabilities and play an active role in expanding its research portfolio. BOLD has three initial research pillars: Beyond Backpropagation, Human-Centric Learning & Discovery, and Embodied Learning. 

 

The role includes implementing developed techniques and algorithms in high-quality software that adheres to group standards and evaluating them on large-scale benchmarks. You will take an active role in maintaining and further developing the lab’s research codebase. 

You will contribute to the supervision and mentorship of DPhil students, CDT students, fourth-year project students, and interns. You will also participate actively in the day-to-day activities of the BOLD Lab, including providing technical guidance to students and engaging in reading groups and other scholarly activities. 

The position involves writing research papers for submission to leading journals and conferences, presenting work at national and international venues, and contributing to scientific reports and publications. You will also support the BOLD Lab’s industrial partnerships through site visits, technical demonstrations, and meetings, and assist in the preparation of project reports and grant proposals. 

 

You should possess a PhD or DPhil (or near completion of) in Machine Learning or Maths. 

 

Informal enquiries may be addressed to boldexec-team@eng.ox.ac.uk  

 

For more information about working at the Department, see www.eng.ox.ac.uk/about/work-with-us/ 

 

Only online applications received before midday on 9 October 2026 can be considered. You will be required to upload a covering letter/supporting statement, including a brief statement of research interests (describing how past experience and future plans fit with the advertised position), CV and the details of two referees as part of your online application. 

 

The Department holds an Athena Swan Bronze award, highlighting its commitment to promoting women in Science, Engineering and Technology. 

•       Agentic AI

•       Human-AI coordination

•       Zero-shot Coordination

•       multi-agent learning