The ExtremeXP project, funded under the Horizon Europe program and run in cooperation with 20+ academic and industrial partners from 10 European countries, is recruiting a postdoctoral researcher.

ExtremeXP aims at ensuring that data-driven insights need to be extremely timely, accurate, precise, fit-for-purpose, and trustworthy despite the increasing challenges in extreme data characteristics (volume, speed, heterogeneity, distribution, diverse quality, etc.). Its main goal is to create a common framework able to optimize the properties of a complex analytics process that the end user cares about (e.g., accuracy, time-to-answer, specificity, recall, precision, resource consumption) by associating user profiles to computation variants.

The postdoc will focus on the design and development of the Adaptive Experiment Planning component of the framework, i.e., the component that continuously determines which complex analytics variant should be executed, given a user intent, profile, and context. To this end, novel rule-based languages, probabilistic models, and experiment specification languages will be evaluated, adopted, and extended, or developed from scratch for ExtremeXP. The component lies at the heart of the ExtremeXP framework since it orchestrates the execution of analytics workflows and the monitoring of relevant system and user feedback metrics. Using terminology from self-adaptive systems research, the work aims at building a controller for runtime adaptations of complex data analytics (including machine learning) workflows.

The postdoc position is embedded in the Software and Sustainability (S2) research group of VU Amsterdam. The position is a temporary employment of max 3 years. The successful applicant will have the opportunity to work in an exciting research environment together with researchers and practitioners from academia and industry.

Your duties

• Perform research and development on the area of software engineering for adaptive complex data analytics (including AI/ML) systems.
• Publish scientific articles and present research results at international conferences and journals.
• Contribute to teaching and supervising activities (e.g., supervision BSc, MSc, and PhD students) at VU Amsterdam.

• A PhD degree in Software Engineering, Computer Science, or related disciplines.
• Strong motivation for scientific research in the intersection of data analytics and engineering for self-adaptive systems.
• Excellent knowledge and skills in theoretical and practical software engineering, including domain-specific language engineering and programming in Python and Java.
• Good communication, organizational and social skills.

Fixed-term contract: 1 year.

A challenging position in a socially involved organization. On full-time basis the remuneration amounts to a minimum gross monthly salary of €2,960 (scale 10) and a maximum €4,670 (scale 10), depending on your education and experience. The job profile is based on the university job ranking system and is vacant for at least 0.8 FTE.

The initial employment contract will affect a period of 1 year. After a satisfactory evaluation of the initial appointment, the contract will be extended for a total duration of 3 years.

Additionally, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam offers excellent fringe benefits and various schemes and regulations to promote a good work/life balance, such as:

• a maximum of 41 days of annual leave based on full-time employment,
• 8% holiday allowance and 8.3% end-of-year bonus,
• solid pension scheme (ABP),
• contribution to commuting expenses,
• optional model for designing a personalized benefits package.

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

The ambition of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is clear: to contribute to a better world through outstanding education and ground-breaking research. We strive to be a university where personal development and commitment to society play a leading role. A university where people from different disciplines and backgrounds collaborate to achieve innovations and to generate new knowledge. Our teaching and research encompass the entire spectrum of academic endeavor - from the humanities, the social sciences and the natural sciences through to the life sciences and the medical sciences.

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is home to more than 30,000 students. We employ over 5,500 individuals. The VU campus is easily accessible and located in the heart of Amsterdam's Zuidas district, a truly inspiring environment for teaching and research.

Diversity
We are an inclusive university community. Diversity is one of our most important values. We believe that engaging in international activities and welcoming students and staff from a wide variety of backgrounds enhances the quality of our education and research. We are always looking for people who can enrich our world with their own unique perspectives and experiences.

The Faculty of Science
The Faculty of Science inspires researchers and students to find sustainable solutions for complex societal issues. From forest fires to big data, from obesity to medicines and from molecules to the moon: our teaching and research programmes cover the full spectrum of the natural sciences. We share knowledge and experience with leading research institutes and industries, both here in the Netherlands and abroad.

Working at the Faculty of Science means working with students, PhD candidates and researchers, all with a clear focus on their field and a broad view of the world. We employ more than 1,250 staff members, and we are home to more than 11,000 students.

About the department, institute
The VU Department of Computer Science has approximately 200 staff members, including approximately 110 PhD students. Lecturers form a critical and essential basis for the functioning of the department, providing foundational education that helps determine the future of our students.

Our research and our students are diverse, covering disciplines such as Social sciences, Humanities, Economics, and Bioinformatics. Currently, we offer programs in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Information Sciences (BSc and MSc), and Bioinformatics and Systems Biology (MSc), with a total of around 1000 new students each year.

The postdoc position is embedded in the Software and Sustainability (S2) research group of VU Amsterdam, which is responsible for research and teaching on various topics of software engineering, software architecture, sustainability, and self-adaptation.