Research Assistant/Research Associate (Fixed Term)

University of Cambridge; Cambridge; On-site; GBP 35,000 - 50,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Salary supplement 2.5%

Job summary

University of Cambridge invites applications for a Research Assistant or Associate to advance program summarisation techniques within the Computer Laboratory. The post focuses on breaking down applications into representative fragments and grouping similar code for efficient benchmarking across future computing systems.

Ideal candidates hold a PhD or are close to submitting their thesis, with a background in Computer Science, computer architectures, and compilers.

Qualifications

• PhD or near submission with evidence of research output and publications.
• Experience developing program analysis tools and familiarity with program summarisation techniques.
• Experience working in teams with robust engineering practices (version control, continuous integration, automated testing).

Responsibilities

• Develop techniques to decompose applications into smaller parts for summarisation and efficient experimentation.
• Group similar code and identify representative fragments to enable benchmarking.
• Produce and publish results in top conferences; provide links to code samples when possible.

Skills

Computer science

Program analysis

Summarisation

Team collaboration

Engineering practices

Education

PhD or near submission

Tools

Git

CI/CD

Automated testing

Job description

Fixed-term: The funds for this post are available for 6 months in the first instance.

Applications are invited for a Research Assistant or Associate to work on program summarisation. We are interested in how benchmark applications can be summarised so that only a small fraction of them needs to be run for experimentation and evaluation of future computing systems. The parts that are executed should be representative of the program as a whole. The successful candidate will develop techniques for breaking an application up into suitably small parts, grouping similar code and identifying representative fragments.

Research Group

Our group consists of PostDocs and PhD students investigating performance, reliability and security in future many-core systems. The position is within the Computer Architecture Research Group at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory. Collaboration with researchers at other universities and industry around the world is encouraged and there are strong links within the group with local companies.

Candidates

We seek candidates with a strong background in Computer Science with a particular interest in computer architectures and compilers. It is essential to have experience developing program analysis tools and existing schemes for program summarisation. Familiarity working in teams with robust engineering practices (version control, continuous integration, automated testing) would be useful. The ideal candidate would have an awareness of the challenges and potential solutions to application profiling.

Applicants should hold a PhD or at least be close to submitting their thesis. Knowledge of a related area would be advantageous but not essential. Candidates should provide evidence of relevant work, where possible, and must demonstrate a desire to perform internationally leading research and to publish in the top conferences in the area.

Please provide a Curriculum Vitae (CV) and a short covering letter outlining your relevant past experience, drawing particular attention to relevant experience and published papers, and linking to one or more examples of code written (e.g. a GitHub handle). If there are specific areas you would like to research, please indicate these in the letter.

More Information

Appointment at Research Associate level is dependent on having a PhD. Those who have submitted but not yet received their thesis will be appointed at Research Assistant level, which will be amended to Research Associate once the PhD has been awarded.

The funds are available for a start date of the 1st October 2026 but some flexibility on this can be arranged.

Further details may be obtained from Prof. Timothy Jones [e-mail]

• In addition to the base salary stated above, the successful candidate for this post will receive an additional 2.5% supplement to their pay.

Questions about the post and the recruitment process may be addressed to the HR Team at [e-mail]

The University actively supports equality, diversity and inclusion and encourages applications from all sections of society.

The University has a responsibility to ensure that all employees are eligible to live and work in the UK.