Research Assistant/Associate - Analytical Capabilities

Location: Utica, NY Category: Research Foundation Job Type: Full-time Temporary Posted On: Fri Nov 13 2026 Job Description:

Position Overview

Job Title: Research Assistant or Associate - Analytical Capabilities

Office/Location: SUNY Polytechnic Institute

The Artificial Intelligence Exploration (AIX) Center at SUNY Polytechnic Institute is looking for a Research Assistant or Research Associate to help build and evaluate AI-enabled tools for complex information environments. We are seeking someone who enjoys turning research questions into practical, well-documented systems. The appointment level will reflect the selected candidate's qualifications and experience. The work will support reproducible studies, clear evidence trails, and thoughtful evaluation of both analytical products and the ways people use the tools.

Topics of particular interest include:

• Building practical AI-assisted workflows, test suites, and evaluation methods for complex information environments.

• Developing retrieval, knowledge-representation, and agentic workflow components that help people understand where an analytical output came from and how it can be evaluated.

• Helping deploy and operate cloud-based research platforms, including hosted analytic harnesses, secure data services, experiment orchestration, and approved user-interaction logging.

• Creating web interfaces and feedback workflows that make analytical tools clear and useful for authorized users while supporting approved evaluation data collection.

You will join a collaborative team of mathematicians, physicists, engineers, and other faculty researchers. The role blends research software development with applied evaluation research and includes work with partners who study analytical practice from complementary perspectives. Cloud platforms, including Google Cloud Platform or comparable services, will support approved experimentation, hosting, and secure research operations.

In addition to the aforementioned responsibilities, the position includes:

• Contributing to original research with the PI and collaborators and sharing findings through workshops, seminars, conferences, and peer-reviewed venues.

• Building and documenting reliable data pipelines, retrieval and knowledge-graph components, and evaluation tools for AI-assisted analytical work.

• Creating cloud-hosted and web-based interfaces that let authorized users work with the analytic harness and offer structured feedback.

• Working with project partners on data preparation, user research, and methods evaluation.

• Developing agentic workflows and experiment orchestration that are observable, testable, and easy to manage.

• Keeping the interdisciplinary team and external partners informed about progress, technical risks, and results.

Key Responsibilities:

• Contributing to original research with the PI and collaborators and preparing publications, reports, and demonstrations.

• Building, testing, and documenting the data, retrieval, knowledge-graph, and evaluation infrastructure behind the analytic harness.

• Developing and operating cloud-hosted, agentic, and web-interface components for authorized user interaction and approved metadata collection.

• Working with partners on research design, user feedback, evaluation, technical reporting, and proposal development.

• Other duties as assigned.

The position is based in Utica, NY.

This position is contingent on the satisfactory completion of a background check; this position may require annual checks.

Salary: $55,000

Job Requirements:

Minimal Qualifications:

• For the Research Assistant level, a bachelor's degree in computer science, data science, information science, engineering, mathematics, or a closely related field is required; an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience will also be considered. For the Research Associate level, candidates should have a master's degree in a relevant field, or a bachelor's degree with substantial relevant experience in research software, data engineering, or applied AI.

• Strong quantitative and data-analysis skills, together with practical experience building analytical tools, data pipelines, or AI-enabled research infrastructure. Experience working with large language models and evaluating their outputs is required.

• Ability to contribute to interdisciplinary research and communicate results clearly in writing and conversation.

• Strong programming skills, including Python, sound software-engineering practices, version control, APIs, and reproducible research workflows.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with retrieval-augmented generation, agentic AI frameworks, LLM evaluation, or vendor-independent AI systems is welcome.

• Experience deploying data- or AI-intensive applications on cloud platforms, preferably Google Cloud Platform, including managed compute, storage, access control, monitoring, and cost management, is welcome.

• Experience with knowledge graphs, vector databases, GraphRAG, provenance or citation validation, document extraction, or web application and API development is a plus.

• Experience working in multidisciplinary teams is valuable, as is familiarity with user research, experiment design, OSINT, or complex information environments.

Additional Information:

Additional Information:

Research Foundation for SUNY Polytechnic Institute offers exceptional benefits such as healthcare, dental, vision, pension plans, competitive pay, generous paid time off, tuition assistance, life insurance and long-term disability insurance.

As an Equal Opportunity / Affirmative Action employer, Research Foundation for SUNY will not discriminate in its employment practices due to an applicant's race, creed, religion, color, citizenship, national origin, sex, age, sexual orientation, predisposing genetic characteristics, gender identification or expression, genetic information, familial status, marital status, pregnancy, status as a domestic violence victim, criminal conviction, disability, military status, disabled veteran, recently separated veteran, Armed Forces Service Medal veteran, active duty or wartime campaign badge veteran, or other characteristic as protected by law. Please feel free to review your equal employment opportunities protections and laws pertaining to these protections at http://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/posters/pdf/eeopost.pdf

The Company will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant.

Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled.

Research Foundation employees are subject to restrictions related to participation in Foreign Government Talent Recruitment Programs, as defined and detailed in United States Department of Energy Order 486.1. You will be asked to disclose any such participation at the time of hire for review by the Research Foundation. The full text of the Order may be found at: https://www.directives.doe.gov/directives-documents/400-series/0486-1-border/@@images/file