PhD Candidate for Software Architecture (ABB/KIT)

KIT is one of eleven Universities of Excellence in Germany. From fundamental research to applications, KIT excels in a broad range of disciplines, i.e., in natural sciences, engineering sciences, economics, and the humanities and social sciences. The KIT "Dependability of Software-intensive Systems" (DSiS) group at the Institute of Information Security and Dependability (KASTEL) is inspired by the fact that in many areas of our daily lives, software has become one the main drivers of innovation. Our research on dependability of software-intensive systems has the vision of software engineering principles and methods integrated into systems engineering to systematically model and analyze software-intensive systems.
ABB is a leading global engineering company that energizes the transformation of society and industry to achieve a more productive, sustainable future. By connecting software to its electrification, robotics, automation and motion portfolio, ABB pushes the boundaries of technology to drive performance to new levels. At ABB Corporate Research we explore novel technologies and innovative methods to enhance the core business strengths of ABB, a company with a long history in innovation and technology. The Software Architecture Research Group of ABB's Corporate Research Center Germany transfers recent academic insights and technology developments into prototypes of future products and systems.
KIT and ABB are looking for an enthusiastic computer scientist or software engineer with an above average master’s degree, who wants to start a research career. The position will be hosted 50% of the time at KIT (50% TV-L 13) and 50% of the time at ABB (50% EG12).

Your responsibilities

• You conduct scientific research on modeling techniques for industrial cloud-native software architectures.
• You work on the challenge of utilizing architecture models for design-time evaluations, simulations, runtime optimizations, and maintenance tasks to improve the modelled systems.
• You devise novel approaches to reduce the configuration complexity of cloud-native infrastructure for container orchestration systems specifically for large-scale distributed control systems.
• You contribute with your scientific work to a “DevOps for Industrial Automation” approach that allows shorter update cycles in a robust manner.
• You participate in research projects at ABB Corporate Research, supported by ABB development units.
• You interview ABB software architects for requirements and design constraints and implement your novel concepts upon the latest modeling frameworks from KIT.
• You construct prototypes to validate your ideas and conduct empirical to tailor your concepts for a smooth technology transfer into software development units.

Your background

• For this role, you have an MSc. or equivalent degree in computer science, software engineering, or a related field.
• Demonstrated academic experience and/or professional experience in software architecture and cloud-native technologies are a plus.
• We value cross-cultural communication skills, creativity, initiative, enthusiasm, and result-orientation to bring your innovations towards new products and digital offerings.
• You have hands-on experience in object-oriented software design and development
• (e.g., C, C++, C#, Java, Python).
• You have experience or you are willing to acquire knowledge in model-based or model-driven software development (e.g., UML, OCL, DSLs, EMF, model transformation frameworks, Digital Twins).
• Expertise in one of the following fields is a plus: knowledge in virtualization and container technologies (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes, WebAssembly, …), infrastructure-as-code (Ansible, Terraform, …) domain knowledge in process automation, experiences with lean/agile software development processes (e.g., Scrum, Kanban).
• Proficient English skills are mandatory.