Assistant Teaching Professor in Computational Social Science and Cognitive Science

About the role

The School of Social Sciences at UC San Diego invites applications for an Assistant Teaching Professor position in Computational Social Science and Cognitive Science, with an anticipated start date of July 1st, 2026.

This appointment confers membership in UCSD's Academic Senate and full voting rights in both CSS and Cognitive Science. The Teaching Professor series includes security of employment analogous to tenure granted upon promotion to the Associate Professor of Teaching level.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to the Computational Social Science program by teaching introductory undergraduate courses (such as CSS 1, 2 and 100) covering Python basics, introductory statistics, and introductory machine learning.
• Develop new courses for the program.
• Teach graduate courses for the M.S. program.
• Teach in the summer 'bootcamp' for incoming graduate students.
• Contribute to the Cognitive Science Department curriculum in machine learning, data science, and computational modeling of cognition.

Requirements

• A PhD or ABD in computational social science or a relevant field.
• Ability and experience teaching Python-based courses on modern computational social science methods at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
• A track record of scholarly contributions and completed projects working with computational models and large-scale social science data.
• Ability to teach courses in Cognitive Science.

Qualifications

• Basic qualifications: PhD or ABD in computational social science or a relevant field.
• Preferred qualifications: Experience teaching Python-based courses, scholarly contributions, and teaching in Cognitive Science.

Skills

The ideal candidate will have a background and expertise in Large Language Models, Computer Vision Models, Deep Neural Networks, and/or other 'AI' or Machine learning fields. They should also have a track record of teaching relevant courses and working with computational models and large-scale social science data.

Benefits

Salary and starting rank will be commensurate with experience and based on the University of California pay scales.

Pay

The base salary range, from the salary table(s), for this position is $80k-$104k. Additional UCSD salary information can be found here: https://aps.ucsd.edu/compensation/apo-salary.html

Schedule

The anticipated start date is July 1st, 2026.