Doctoral Student in Computer Science - Program Transformation

About the role

Lund University's Department of Computer Science, Software Development and Environments division, is looking for a doctoral student in computer science focusing on program transformation. The project develops tools and techniques that enforce guard-rails during software refactoring and other program evolution, steering and recovering from unintended behavioural change caused by unreliable sources such as developers or large language models. It is funded by the ELLIIT excellence centre and is a collaboration with Linköping University's Natural Language Processing group.

Key responsibilities

• Carry out research on automatic program analysis and program transformation to prevent unintended behavioural change during refactoring and similar tasks
• Learn, apply and possibly help develop research methods suited to the project's questions
• Develop software tools, algorithms and components, evaluate them in realistic scenarios and share them with the project team
• Present findings at the annual ELLIIT workshop and discuss work with academic and industrial partners
• Collaborate with industrial researchers, especially in Lund
• Take part in teaching and other departmental work, up to 20% of working hours

Required profile

• A second-cycle qualification, or 240 credits with at least 60 in the second cycle, or equivalent knowledge
• At least 60 advanced-level second-cycle credits relevant to the topic, or an MSc in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, ICT, Engineering Physics or Engineering Mathematics
• Knowledge or experience in compiler construction or the foundations of static program analysis
• Very good English, very good programming experience, independence, persistence and teamwork

Required skills

• Advantageous: automatic program transformation tools, Java, functional or declarative programming, NLP, machine learning and large language models, systematic software evaluation, systems programming, discrete mathematics related to program analysis

The employment is a full-time fixed-term position starting in spring 2027 or later, with a four-year doctoral programme. Applications in English include a CV, cover letter, copies of study certificates and other supporting documents.