PhD Student in Software Engineering

This position is a full-time funded PhD position with research funded by WASP. You will have the opportunity to collaborate for five years with a world-leading research team and put yourself into a great position for a future career in academia or industry. You will also be part of the WASP research school which gives you ample opportunity to connect to and get input and feedback from other WASP PhD students and faculty both nationally and internationally.

Project description
We are currently looking for a PhD student working in the general area of software engineering and AI/Machine Learning at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden. The position is funded through WASP (Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program). We expect the prospective student to be interested in research in one or more of the following topics:
- Software testing augmentation/automation.
- Explainable/interpretable or applied AI.
- Optimisation- or Search-based software engineering.
- Development and evolution of testing tools and frameworks / Creating testing tools.

The complexity of software is rapidly increasing, with components that are either traditionally coded or implemented as ML/AI models. However, comprehensive specifications for these components are often lacking, and when they do exist, they tend to be incomplete. To ensure high-quality systems, it is crucial to guarantee that components behave as intended, especially at the boundaries of the input space where the output or behaviour changes, or should change, dramatically.

The goal of this PhD project is to improve upon our current research and tools to automatically discover, extract, and condense understandable specifications for the boundary behaviour of both traditional and ML/AI software systems and components. This will be accomplished by advancing methods for automated boundary value analysis and specification mining using ML, and by combining these methods in novel ways.

The person to be hired will conduct research under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Robert Feldt (http://robertfeldt.net/) and co-supervision of Dr. Francisco Gomes de Oliveira Neto (https://franciscogon.com/). You will work in tight collaboration with the Interaction Design and Software Engineering (IDSE) division at Chalmers and University of Gothenburg.

Software Engineering at Chalmers:
Our office is located in beautiful Lindholmen, overseeing the river where it meets the sea. You will be embedded in a vibrant and tightly-knit group conducting research in varied fields of software engineering, including software testing, requirements engineering, human aspects of software engineering, empirical software engineering, and software development bots. With approximately 20 faculty members, we are arguably one of the largest academic software engineering groups. We work actively to achieve a working environment with equal conditions, and values the qualities that diversity brings to its operations.

The division has hosted past international conferences such as EASE 2022, ICSE 2018, ICSA 2017, and REFSQ 2015. For industrial research, the division hosts the Software Center, an associated institute with a network of five universities and ten global companies including Siemens, Axis, and Jeppesen.

Major responsibilities
A PhD position in Sweden is a full-time employment with a competitive monthly salary and full social benefits (e.g., parental leave and compensation for sick leave). The position is limited to a maximum of five years of full-time study (assuming 20% teaching and other departmental duties spread over the 5 year period). There are no tuition fees for PhD studies at Chalmers.

Further, as this is a position within WASP, participation in various WASP activities (WASP graduate school, meetings and conferences, as well as study trips) is mandatory. After completing PhD studies at Chalmers University of Technology, you will be in great demand from Swedish as well as international industry, and you will have an excellent basis for an academic career as well.

Qualifications
To qualify as a PhD student you must have a master's level degree corresponding to at least 240 higher education credits in a relevant field, by the starting date. 

The position requires excellent verbal and written communication skills in English. Strong programming skills and knowledge in modern software engineering processes is required. If you are not familiar with Swedish, you are encouraged, but not required, to learn it during your employment. Chalmers offers Swedish courses. 

The following knowledge is a meritorious:
- Practical experience with explainable/interpretable AI.
- Proficiency with, preferably, Julia and/or Python programming languages.
- Use of testing frameworks (e.g. JUnit, pytest, pitest, MutPy, Hypothesis, Quickcheck).
- Prior work in a research project, or scientific publications.

Contract terms
Full-time temporary employment. The position is limited to a maximum of five years.

Application procedure
The application should be marked with Ref 20230327 and written in English. The application should be sent electronically and be attached as PDF-files, as below. Maximum size for each file is 40 MB. Please note that the system does not support Zip files.

CV: (Please name the document: CV, Family name, Ref. number)
• CV
• Other, for example previous employments or leadership qualifications and positions of trust.
• Two references that we can contact.

Personal letter: (Please name the document as: Personal letter, Family name, Ref. number)
1-3 pages where you:
• Introduce yourself
• Describe your previous experience of relevance for the position (e.g. education, thesis work and, if applicable, any other research activities)
• Describe your future goals and future research focus

Other documents:
• Copies of bachelor and/or master’s thesis.
• Attested copies and transcripts of completed education, grades and other certificates, e.g. TOEFL test results.

Please use the button at the foot of the page to reach the application form. 

For questions, please contact:
Dr. Robert Feldt, IDSE
Email: robert.feldt@chalmers.se

Dr. Francisco Gomes, IDSE
Email: francisco.gomes@cse.gu.se


*** Chalmers declines to consider all offers of further announcement publishing or other types of support for the recruiting process in connection with this position. ***