Student Assistant: Future Data Infrastructure of Smart Grids

1000scholars; Zürich; Hybrid; CHF 33,000 - 44,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stundenlohn ETH Zürich

Job summary

ETH Zürich seeks a Student Assistant to help build a high-performance data infrastructure for future smart grids. You will work on containerized environments, secure and scalable architectures, and reliable data pipelines across ETH, utilities, and energy management systems.

You will develop dashboards (Grafana), explore time-series databases, and contribute to front-end APIs for live grid insight. English fluency is required; German is a plus.

Qualifications

• ETH student enrolled in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Power Engineering, or related fields.
• Fluent in English; German a plus.
• Strong expertise in Git, Python, and Linux development environments.
• Experience with RabbitMQ, Grafana, SQL, Docker, and front-end development is a plus.
• Attention to detail and responsible work style.

Responsibilities

• Infrastructure development in containerd environments, ensuring security, availability, scalability and accountability of servers.
• Enhance data/command transmission between ETH, utilities and energy systems with reliable backpressure and exactly-once semantics.
• Work with time-series databases for high-volume ingestion and low-latency queries, ensuring scalability under load.
• Implement replication, backups and disaster recovery to withstand faults without data loss.
• Build Grafana dashboards and APIs for live grid insight and researcher usability.

Skills

Git

Python

Linux

Docker

Grafana

SQL

RabbitMQ

Front-end development

Education

ETH student in Computer Science / Electrical Engineering / Power Engineering

Tools

Grafana

SQL

RabbitMQ

Job description

Student Assistant: Future Data Infrastructure of Smart Grids

10%-30%, Zurich, fixed-term

As part of Grid2050 and NCCR Automation, we are building a high-performance, secure, and fault-tolerant data infrastructure to power cutting-edge energy research. Grid2050 connects real-world electricity grid measurements, smart meter data, and actuator control into a single ecosystem for experimentation at scale.

Project background

The future smart grid features the widespread integration of distributed energy resources, introducing new challenges to infrastructure in areas such as automatic control, data management, and communication. The Internet of Things, big data technologies, and operational technology must be reliably and securely integrated to ensure smart grid operations.

We are seeking a reliable and highly motivated student assistant to support our research. In this role, you will design and develop data infrastructure to tackle real-world challenges in smart grid research, ensuring our infrastructure meets requirements in the future - such as scalability under load, resilience to failure, and adaptability to change.

The starting date is flexible but an early start is preferred.

Job description

• Infrastructure Development: Work in containerd environments, ensure the security, availability, scalability and accountability of our server.
• Communication Pipeline: Enhance and extend data and command transmission infrastructure between ETH, utilities, and energy management systems - ensuring they’re reliable (think 'backpressure handling' and 'exactly-once' semantics) and maintainable.
• Databases: Work with time-series database designed for high-volume ingestion and low-latency queries, and make sure they are scalable and reliable under extreme scenarios.
• Reliability & Recovery: Implement replication, backup, and disaster recovery strategies - making sure the system survives faults without losing data.
• Front-end Development: Build visualization dashboards (Grafana) and remote experimentation APIs to give researchers live insight into grid behavior and improve user experiences on our platform.

Profile

• You are an ETH student enrolled in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Power Engineering, or related fields.
• You are passionate about data engineering, systems development, and energy-related topics.
• You are fluent in English. German is a plus but not mandatory.
• You have strong expertise in Git, Python, and Linux development environments.
• Ideally, you have worked with one or some of the following fields: RabbitMQ, Grafana, SQL, Docker, and front-end development.
• You pay strong attention to details, and you work responsibly.

We offer

• Hands-on experience with real-world data infrastructure, and distributed system design.
• Working alongside leading academics, industry partners, and a collaborative research community. Rare chance to see theory play out on a real part of our critical infrastructure.
• Flexible working conditions, state-of-the-art facilities, and remuneration according to ETH student assistant salary guidelines Stundenlohn - Staffnet | ETH Zürich.

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 research group can be found on our Website. Questions regarding the position should be directed to Hanshuo Wu ([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.

About ETH Zürich

ETH Zurich is one of the world’s leading universities specialising in science and technology. We are renowned for our excellent education, cutting-edge fundamental research and direct transfer of new knowledge into society. Over 30,000 people from more than 120 countries find our university to be a place that promotes independent thinking and an environment that inspires excellence. Located in the heart of Europe, yet forging connections all over the world, we work together to develop solutions for the global challenges of today and tomorrow.