The AI for Retail Lab (AIR) at the University of Amsterdam’s Informatics Institute is seeking a PhD candidate in the emerging area of data management and systems for machine learning.

Our lab offers a unique setup: PhD candidates can conduct academic research at the university, and evaluate their ideas on real world data and systems at the same time, in collaboration with our industry partner Ahold Delhaize and its brands (i.e., bol.com, Albert Heijn).

We are looking for a PhD candidate who is eager to design, implement and evaluate data validation techniques to make large-scale ML applications more robust and reliable. Your research will focus on complex ML applications, which include data integration and data preprocessing pipelines. The goal of your research will be to make future systems automatically detect potential data errors early, and warn the operating users accordingly. You will provide efficient and scalable implementations of your methods, and integrate them with popular open source systems.

We require:

• a Master’s degree in computer science (or a related field);
• a creative and independent mindset;
• fluency in English;
• strong programming skills in Python and one additional language (e.g., Java, Scala, C/C++ or Rust);
• interest in the internals of dataflow systems (Spark, Hadoop, Flink, Timely Dataflow, ...) and relational databases;
• basic understanding of Machine Learning.

Not required, but helpful are:

• first-hand experience with real world data processing systems and/or ML deployments (e.g., from internships, jobs or entrepreneurial experience);
• contributions to open source projects.

Our offer

A temporary contract for 38 hours per week for the duration of four years which should lead to a dissertation (PhD thesis). The starting date is flexible and will be discussed together with regard to the possibilities because of the COVID-19 situation. The initial contract will be for a period of 18 months and after a satisfactory evaluation the contract will be extended for 30 months. You will get a customized training and supervision plan, that will be evaluated every year.

The salary will be €2,325 to €2,972 (scale P) gross per month, based on full-time employment (38 hours a week). These amounts are exclusive 8% holiday allowance and 8,3% end-of-year bonus. A favorable tax agreement, the ‘30% ruling’, may apply to non-Dutch applicants. The Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities is applicable.

Are you curious about our extensive package of secondary employment benefits like our excellent opportunities for study and development? Then find out more about working at the Faculty of Science.

University of Amsterdam

With over 5,000 employees, 30,000 students and a budget of more than 600 million euros, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) is an intellectual hub within the Netherlands. Teaching and research at the UvA are conducted within seven faculties: Humanities, Social and Behavioural Sciences, Economics and Business, Law, Science, Medicine and Dentistry. Housed on four city campuses in or near the heart of Amsterdam, where disciplines come together and interact, the faculties have close links with thousands of researchers and hundreds of institutions at home and abroad.  

The UvA’s students and employees are independent thinkers, competent rebels who dare to question dogmas and aren’t satisfied with easy answers and standard solutions. To work at the UvA is to work in an independent, creative, innovative and international climate characterised by an open atmosphere and a genuine engagement with the city of Amsterdam and society.

Faculty of Science - Informatics Institute

The Faculty of Science has a student body of around 6,500, as well as 1,600 members of staff working in education, research or support services. Researchers and students at the Faculty of Science are fascinated by every aspect of how the world works, be it elementary particles, the birth of the universe or the functioning of the brain.

The mission of the Informatics Institute is to perform curiosity-driven and use-inspired fundamental research in Computer Science. The main research themes are Artificial Intelligence, Computational Science and Systems and Network Engineering. Our research involves complex information systems at large, with a focus on collaborative, data driven, computational and intelligent systems, all with a strong interactive component.