Open positions – Autonomous Distributed Systems Lab

Six Postdoctoral Fellowships (2 years) in Distributed Systems

The Department of Computing Science seeks six postdoctoral fellows for an ambitious series of projects with the Autonomous Distributed Systems lab. The fellowships are for two years of full-time studies, starting 1st May 2022 or by agreement. The application deadline is 13th February 2022.

About us

The Department of Computing Science, Umeå University, is growing rapidly, characterized by world-leading research in several scientific fields. We are now looking to recruit up to six post doctors to join the award-winning Autonomous Distributed Systems (ADS) Lab. The ADS lab is an internationally renowned research group focusing on autonomous management of Cloud & Edge resources and applications to best support our increasingly digitized and connected society. The lab has developed international partnerships with companies including Google, IBM, Red Hat, and Ericsson, as well as universities and institutes such as Princeton University, Imperial College London, Lawrence Berkeley Lab, etc. Our workplace consists of a diverse group from different nationalities, backgrounds and fields. 

The scholarship projects are financed by the Kempe foundation. Each scholarship is for two years with a starting date as agreed. The scholarship amounts to 350 000 SEK per year (around 34 000 euro), plus funding for travel and equipment. The scholarships are not subject to tax.

We welcome applications until the 13th of February 2022.

Project description

With funding from the Kempe Foundation, the ADS Lab aims to establish a de-facto Center of Excellence in Autonomous Distributed Systems, with a particular focus on reasoning, management, and anomaly detection in next-generation Edge and Cloud systems. We are offering six postdoctoral fellowships for candidates that wish to develop their scientific understanding of areas including but not limited to:

• Energy-Efficient Cloud Technology (combining models of data centre behaviour with energy prediction, energy-aware scheduling, etc.)
• Cloud-Edge Simulation (understanding cloud-edge system interactions and impacts, developing simulation-based approaches for experimentation, etc.)
• Efficient machine learning-based management systems (reducing data size needed to make accurate predictions, dynamic logging strategies, balancing accuracy with performance, etc.)
• Multimodal learning for urban anomaly prediction (combining probabilistic reasoning with representation learning, contrastive learning, and unsupervised learning, etc.)
• Autonomic anomaly detection for microservices (root-cause identification and automated mitigation, service mesh circuit-breaking, deep learning, etc.)

The postdocs are encouraged to bring their own expertise and will get the opportunity to design the individual projects and develop new algorithms, models, techniques, software, and tools, as well as publish papers at high-impact venues.

Qualifications

A person who has been awarded a doctorate or a foreign qualification deemed to be the equivalent of a doctorate qualifies for employment as a postdoctoral fellow. Priority should be given to candidates who have completed their doctoral degrees no more than three years before the closing date of the application. A candidate who has completed their degree prior to this may be considered if special circumstances exist. Special circumstances include absence due to illness, parental leave, appointments of trust in trade unions or similar circumstances.

• A PhD (or equivalent) degree in the Distributed Systems domain
• Good ability to co-operate and also work independently and take initiative are required
• Strong skills in written and spoken English are required

Other meriting qualifications are:

• A strong track record of academic peer-reviewed publications
• Ability to program (e.g. C, Java, Python, Rust, scripting, etc.)
• Experience in systems and DevOps tools (Kubernetes, Terraform, etc.)
• A strong background in Cloud-Edge systems research or development
• Application

A full application should include

• Personal letter
• Curriculum vitae (CV) with publication list,
• Certified copy of doctoral degree certificate,
• Certified copies of other diplomas, list of completed academic courses and grades,
• Copy of doctoral thesis and relevant articles,
• Contact information for at least two reference persons,
• Other documents that the applicant wishes to claim.

The application deadline is 13th February 2022

Submit your application as a PDF marked with the reference number FS 2.1.6-2739-21, both in the file name and in the subject field of the email, to medel@diarie.umu.se. The application can be written in English (preferably) or Swedish. 

Further information

For more information, please contact Erik Elmroth, erik.elmroth@cs.umu.se.

We look forward to receiving your application!