Scientist LLM's and agentic AI

Want to make your mark on our time? Become a Scientist LLM's and agentic AI at TNO in The Hague!

About this position

Worldwide, conflicts, criminal activity, and subversive actions threaten our security. To counter these threats, TNO conducts innovative research and applies it in close collaboration with our security partners. In doing so, we support, among others, the Ministry of Defence and the Police in making the best-informed decisions and in carrying out (semi-)automated actions they can rely on.

We do this by conducting applied research, developing innovative ideas, and translating them into practical solutions. Examples include the deployment of intelligence for Defence, the development of decision-support models for the Public Prosecution Service, and the use of NLP for the analysis of criminal communications. In this role, you will work within the research group Intelligence & Decision Support. This driven team of more than 35 colleagues brings together a wide range of expertise and backgrounds and is part of the Defence, Safety & Security unit.

What will be your role?

As a scientist, you will contribute to research projects on LLMs and agentic AI for decision support for partners in the defence and security domain. Working in multidisciplinary teams, you will tackle various research questions, helping to define approaches and methodologies. Based on scientific research, established methods, and best practices, you will develop concepts with your team, where modeling and programming around LLMs are essential parts of your work.

Your deliverables may include proofs of concept, always keeping in mind the impact of the tools you develop on the daily operations of our partners. You will communicate project results to partners and act as a valuable discussion partner for colleagues.

Examples of projects include:

• Developing an LLM concept for decision support for the Police.
• Creating a proof of concept for mission planning for Defence.
• Contributing to a Dutch LLM.
• Demonstrating the feasibility of agentic AI for security partners.

At TNO, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to explore new AI tools, attend conferences, and pursue new research directions. You can also initiate internal research lines and contribute to collaboration proposals. In addition to projects, you can take on various side activities aligned with your interests and development goals, such as coordinating internships, organizing technical or social events, and mentoring new colleagues.

What we expect from you

You are motivated to contribute to the military and security domain and eager to learn so your work increasingly aligns with partners’ needs. You can handle sensitive information and are open to joining exercises or working on-site with partners to build valuable domain knowledge. Your curiosity drives you to seek out the information you need for your assignments. You are analytically strong and can help translate science into practice.

You thrive in working on multiple projects and teams simultaneously and can switch between them effectively. You enjoy collaboration and use your communication skills while planning your work autonomously and taking initiative. You can present conclusions clearly in text, presentations, diagrams, and data visualizations, and you are comfortable facilitating expert workshops.

You love working with AI, especially LLMs, and want to deepen your expertise in the coming years. Beyond prompt engineering, you are interested in fine-tuning, explainability, robustness, adversarial attacks, and other topics to build reliable systems. You enjoy diving deep into tasks such as fine-tuning smaller models and developing specialized applications. You are eager to learn, share knowledge with colleagues, and work as a team player.

What You Bring:

• An academic Master’s or PhD in fields such as Artificial Intelligence, Applied Mathematics, Data Science, or Operations Research.
• Excellent communication skills in Dutch and English, both spoken and written.
• Solid programming experience in Python (and possibly other relevant languages).
• Experience with common LLM workflows, such as RAG pipelines, fine-tuning/LoRA, and model adaptation.
• Familiarity with modern LLM tools, e.g., HuggingFace, LangChain, or LlamaIndex. Experience with enterprise models and APIs (Azure AI / Foundry or OpenAI GPT API) is a plus, especially if you’ve built applications interacting with LLMs.
• Experience with data analysis and visualization/user interfaces (e.g., Vue.js and React).
• Demonstrable affinity with the security and defence domain; experience in this field is a plus.

What you'll get in return

Challenging and varied work with a real impact. And plenty of opportunities as, at TNO, you are in charge of shaping your career. In addition, you will be given every opportunity to develop yourself.

Perhaps you would like to grow your career in the direction of commerce or consultancy? Or would you like to become a project manager? Immerse yourself in sustainable innovations? Or carve out a career as a technical expert?

TNO offers optional employee benefits, enabling you to tailor your benefits package to match your personal situation. You may also expect:

• An extremely professional, innovative working environment where colleagues are leading experts in their field.
• The opportunity to attend courses, workshops and conferences, and to receive training and coaching based on your needs.
• 33 days annual leave plus a flexible holiday that can be used on a cultural, religious, or otherwise important day of your choosing (on a full-time basis).
• Flexible working hours, the possibility to work parttime (32 or 36 hours) and the possibility of working from home.
• A good pension scheme.

TNO as an employer

Our people are at the heart of TNO. Their curiosity, expertise and entrepreneurial mindset make it possible to deliver high-impact research and innovations that contribute to society’s sustainable wellbeing and prosperity.

Your talent and ambition have every opportunity to flourish at TNO. You work with experts (both within and beyond TNO), have access to advanced technology and the freedom to explore, experiment and innovate. Our strength lies in independence, reliability and collaboration. We find each other in wonder and ingenuity. We are driven to push boundaries. By working with businesses and government, and by connecting different perspectives, we strengthen our innovative capability and create responsible, meaningful results.

As you will be working for clients in the domain of defence and security, a Certificate of No Objection issued by AIVD (the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service) is mandatory. This means you will have to undergo a security screening.