Postdoctoral Researcher in AI for Scientific Discovery

About the role

TotalEnergies OneTech is looking for a postdoctoral researcher in artificial intelligence for scientific discovery in Solaise, France. The position aims to develop and deploy AI solutions that extract, structure and connect scientific knowledge and data, and to explore advanced AI approaches such as result interpretation, hypothesis generation and experiment recommendation. It is a fixed-term position of 18 months.

Key responsibilities

• Design and implement AI pipelines that extract, structure and use information from heterogeneous scientific sources such as experimental datasets, publications, reports, patents, images and technical documents.
• Develop approaches combining LLMs, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), AI agents, multimodal models and machine learning to connect and exploit scientific knowledge and experimental data.
• Design prototypes and proof-of-concept demonstrators for concrete research challenges, especially in product formulation.
• Explore AI methods to interpret results, identify relationships, generate and validate scientific hypotheses, and to recommend and prioritise experiments.
• Evaluate the relevance, robustness, traceability and scientific value of the approaches with researchers and domain experts.
• Help disseminate the developed methodologies across R&D environments.

Required profile

• PhD awarded within the last three years in AI, data science, machine learning or a related field.
• Strong expertise in generative AI, large language models and agentic AI systems.
• Experience developing and deploying AI solutions in scientific or industrial settings; experience in scientific research, materials science, chemistry or R&D is an asset.
• Fluency in French and English, written and spoken (minimum C1).

Required skills

• Data science, machine learning and generative AI, including RAG, embeddings, prompt engineering and agent-based systems.
• Development and deployment of AI agents and LLM-powered applications.
• Solid programming skills, particularly in Python.