AI for Science Engineer 80%-100%

ETH Zürich; Zürich; Vor Ort; CHF 120.000 - 190.000; Vollzeit

Benefits dieser Stelle

Competitive salary

Zurich office location

Research access and collaboration

Zusammenfassung

ETH Zürich’s AI Center is seeking an AI for Science Engineer to build frontier AI systems that accelerate researchers across ETH. You will partner with labs to co-develop agentic pipelines that orchestrate simulations, curate data, evaluate models, and chain domain-specific tools.

This role emphasizes shipping AI solutions beyond infrastructure, collaborating with external partners, and contributing to teaching and student projects in Zurich.

Qualifikationen

• PhD in CS or related field preferred; strong research engagement considered.
• 1–3 years of experience building end-to-end agentic/LLM-based systems (exceptional grads welcome).
• Strong software engineering skills: services, APIs, data pipelines, containers, CI/CD.
• Hands-on experience with AI/ML tooling (LLM APIs, agent frameworks, RAG pipelines, PyTorch, HuggingFace).
• Experience with GPU computing and distributed computing environments.
• Exposure to planning, scheduling, workflow engines, or scientific computing workflows is a plus; open-source contributions welcomed.
• Excellent communicator bridging researchers and engineers; English fluency required.

Aufgaben

• Partner with ETH labs to identify high-impact use cases for agentic AI and co-develop pipelines and tools.
• Build planning and orchestration components turning goals into constrained workflows.
• Make systems traceable with reproducible runs and clear interfaces for researchers.
• Support data preparation, model fine-tuning, distillation, quantization, and efficient inference.
• Contribute to evaluation/benchmarking of AI systems on scientific tasks.
• Develop reusable recipes, architectures, and templates for open-source adoption.
• Stay at the frontier of agentic AI and evaluate new frameworks; prototype patterns.
• Contribute to teaching and student projects.

Kenntnisse

Agentic AI

LLM tooling

Software engineering

GPU computing

Planning & scheduling

Communication

English fluency

Ausbildung

PhD in computer science or related field

Master’s degree with strong experience

Tools

LLM APIs

Agent frameworks

RAG pipelines

PyTorch

HuggingFace

Jobbeschreibung

The ETH AI Center is one of the largest AI centers in Europe with over 130 Professors from all 16 departments of ETH Zurich and over 1500 associated PhD students & post-docs. Our mission is to foster interdisciplinary AI research and pave the way from science to society.

Project background

As AI for Science Engineer you build the frontier AI systems that help researchers across ETH accelerate their research with frontier AI. You will partner with research labs to understand their scientific challenges and co-develop agentic solutions: multi-step pipelines that plan and orchestrate simulations and experiments, curate data, evaluate models, or chain domain-specific tools in ways that weren't possible before.

This role is ideal for an engineer who wants to ship AI solutions, not just infrastructure - someone who sees a research challenge and immediately starts thinking about what combination of agents, models, and pipelines could solve it. Part of the work is carried out together with external research and industry partners.

Job description

• Partner with research labs across ETH to identify high-impact use cases for agentic AI and co-develop novel pipelines and tools.
• Build planning and orchestration components that turn research goals into executable workflows under constraints such as cost, latency, and fidelity, and adapt as new results come in.
• Make what the system does inspectable: traceable runs, reproducible results, and interfaces that let researchers understand and steer the work.
• Support research teams with data preparation and curation, and help them optimize, specialize, and deploy models - fine-tuning, distillation, quantization, and efficient inference.
• Contribute to the evaluation and benchmarking of AI systems on scientific tasks, including open and closed frontier AI models.
• Develop and open-source reusable recipes, reference architectures, and templates that lower the barrier for others to build on.
• Stay at the frontier of agentic AI: evaluate emerging frameworks, prototype new patterns, advise research teams.
• Contribute to teaching and student projects.

Profile

• Preferably a doctorate in computer science or a computational discipline; a master's degree with strong relevant experience is equally welcome. Our main counterparts are researchers, so being able to engage with them on their own terms matters.
• Experience building and deploying agentic or LLM-based systems end to end, not only using them - typically 1-3 years of relevant experience, though exceptional recent graduates are encouraged to apply too.
• Strong software and systems engineering skills: services, APIs, data pipelines, containers, CI/CD.
• Hands-on experience with modern AI/ML tooling (LLM APIs, agent frameworks, RAG pipelines, PyTorch, HuggingFace) and with model optimization and efficient inference.
• Experience with GPU computing and high-performance or distributed computing environments.
• Exposure to planning, scheduling, workflow engines, or reasoning systems, and to scientific computing workflows, is an advantage; open-source contributions are a strong plus.
• An effective communicator who bridges researchers and engineers - proactive, delivery-oriented, and keen to enable others to do their best work.
• Fluency in English.

We offer

If you are a highly motivated individual with a passion for AI and a desire to make a significant impact in a rapidly evolving field, we would love to hear from you. Join the ETH AI Center and work at the forefront of AI research in Europe, collaborating with leading faculty, global partners, and a rapidly growing ecosystem in Zurich.

ETH Zurich is a family-friendly employer with excellent working conditions. You can look forward to an exciting working environment, cultural diversity and attractive offers and benefits.

Working, teaching and research at ETH Zurich

We value diversity and sustainability

In line with our values, ETH Zurich encourages an inclusive culture. We promote equality of opportunity, value diversity and nurture a working and learning environment in which the rights and dignity of all our staff and students are respected. Visit our Equal Opportunities and Diversity website to find out how we ensure a fair and open environment that allows everyone to grow and flourish. Sustainability is a core value for us - we are consistently working towards a climate-neutral future.

Curious? So are we.

Further information about the ETH AI Center can be found on our website. Questions regarding the position should be directed to Arnout Devos [e-mail] (no applications).

We would like to point out that the pre-selection is carried out by the responsible recruiters and not by artificial intelligence.

For recruitment services the GTC of ETH Zurich apply.