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Doctoral positions in software engineering for continuous compliance of software-intensive systems
The department of Computer Science and Engineering is strongly international, with approximately 300 employees from over 30 countries. The department is a fully integrated department with the University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology as principals. The department of Computer Science and Engineering is looking for three doctoral students. The position is placed in the Division for Interaction Design and Software Engineering at the department, with the University of Gothenburg as the employer.
The Division for Interaction Design and Software Engineering is a leader in research and education on complex, software-intensive systems, with strong international collaborations and close ties to the local industry. With around 50 researchers — including PhD students, postdocs, and faculty at all levels — we are one of the largest academic software engineering research groups worldwide. Our core expertise spans AI Engineering, software testing, requirements engineering, behavioral software engineering, and automotive software engineering.
General information about being a doctoral student at the University of Gothenburg can be found on the university's doctoral student pages: https://www.gu.se/en/doctoral-studies
Duties
The Department of Computer Science and Engineering is now recruiting up to three doctoral students in software and AI engineering for continuous compliance of software-intensive systems. The positions are part of a larger collaborative research effort involving academic and industrial partners from sectors such as automotive, telecom, aerospace, industrial automation, manufacturing, and safety- and security-critical systems.
The three doctoral students will work on complementary aspects of continuous compliance. Two positions will be supervised by Prof. Eric Knauss, potentially with co-supervision by Dr. Sven Peldszus depending on the final project focus. One position will be supervised by Prof. Miroslaw Staron. The doctoral students are expected to collaborate with each other, with the wider project consortium, and with other senior researchers in the project.
More information about the project and program can be found here:
https://www.chalmers.se/en/current/news/cse-ai-to-enable-continuous-compli-ance-in-software-and-ai-systems/
https://www.vinnova.se/en/news/2026/05/350-million-for-project-that-will-change-swedish-industry/
The doctoral projects will focus on one or more of the following research directions:
- Explainability of AI-enabled software products: investigating what AI components and AI-enabled software systems need to expose so that their behavior, outputs, and assumptions can be explained in ways that support compliance arguments and assurance activities.
- Compliance evidence as a by-product of development: developing reference models and practices for collecting compliance-relevant evidence continuously from ordinary engineering work, including CI/CD pipelines, development workflows, testing, analysis, documentation, and traceability infrastructures.
- Automated collection and retrieval of compliance evidence: designing mechanisms that help engineers identify, structure, retrieve, and connect evidence from heterogeneous engineering data sources, potentially using semantic retrieval, graph-based representations, retrieval-augmented generation, and agentic AI.
- Runtime traceability for continuous compliance: extending traceability from development time into operation, so that assumptions, requirements, design decisions, and compliance obligations can be connected to observed system behavior at run time.
The overall project is focused on solving industrial challenges in collaboration with companies, including Axis, Bosch, Ericsson, Grundfos, and Volvo, within Software Center (www.software-center.se).
Your responsibilities will include:
- Conducting empirical studies and industrial field studies, to understand how compliance evidence, explainability, and traceability are handled in practice.
- Developing conceptual models, reference architectures, and methods for continuous compliance in modern software-intensive development.
- Designing and evaluating tool support for automated or semi-automated collection, structuring, retrieval, and validation of compliance evidence.
- Investigating how AI-enabled systems and AI components can provide internal explanations that support compliance arguments and assurance cases.
- Studying how compliance-relevant information can be traced across requirements, architecture, implementation, testing, deployment, and run-time operation. · Publishing research findings in high-quality international venues in software engineering, requirements engineering, AI engineering, and software systems.
- Contributing to open research artifacts, such as datasets, models, tools, and demonstrators, where appropriate.
You will work in a supportive academic environment and gain expertise in empirical software/AI engineering, AI-enabled development, software architectures, tooling, requirements engineering, traceability, compliance engineering, and industrial research collaboration.
All positions are a five-year, full-time doctoral position, where 80% of the time is dedicated to doctoral studies (a full-time equivalent of 4 years) leading to a PhD degree.
As part of your employment as a doctoral student, you may have departmental duties corresponding to up to 20 % of full-time employment, distributed throughout your study period, and result in a corresponding extension of the studies. Departmental duties usually consist of teaching at first- and second-cycle levels, but may also include research and administration.
Eligibility
Doctoral education requires general eligibility and, where appropriate, specific eligibility as set out in the general syllabus for the subject.
The general eligibility requirements for doctoral studies are:
- having completed a degree at second-cycle level, or
- the fulfilment of course requirements totalling at least 240 credits, of which at least 60 credits must be at second-cycle level, or
- the acquisition of equivalent knowledge in some other way, either in Sweden or abroad.
Specific entry requirements for this subject, according to the general syllabus, are that the orientation of the student’s degree shall have a sufficiently close connection to the subject of the third-cycle programme.
Assessment criteria
The selection of applicants who meet the basic and specific eligibility requirements will be based on the ability to assimilate the doctoral studies.
Therefore, it is important to include parts of your own work such as theses and articles that you have authored or co-authored. Links to software repositories with relevant projects should be included where relevant.
Fluency in English (both verbal and in writing) is mandatory. Swedish is not a requirement, but the department offers Swedish courses.
The following qualifications are particularly relevant for this position:
- A strong background in software engineering, computer science, data science, AI engineering, or a closely related field.
- Knowledge of requirements engineering, software architecture, software testing, DevOps, continuous integration/continuous deployment, software traceability, or software analytics.
- Programming experience, for example in Java, Python, C, or other languages used for software and AI engineering research and tool development.
- Interest in empirical research methods, including interviews, case studies, literature reviews, workshops, or industrial evaluation.
- Interest in AI-enabled software engineering, explainable AI, retrieval-augmented generation, knowledge graphs, semantic retrieval, engineering data analytics, or agentic AI.
The successful candidate is expected to be analytical, independent, collaborative, and motivated to work across the boundary between academic research and industrial practice. Experience in the following areas can be of merit but will be gained through the doctoral position:
- Experience with development tools, CI/CD pipelines, requirements-management tools, issue trackers, testing frameworks, static analysis tools, logging infrastructures, or engineering data platforms is advantageous.
- Experience with large-scale software engineering data, metadata management, log retrieval, documentation generation, or AI-based analysis of development artefacts is a plus.
- Experience with industrial software development, software-intensive systems, safety-critical systems, cybersecurity, or regulatory compliance is a plus.
- Prior experience with research publication, open-source development, or collaborative software projects is advantageous but not required.
Admission and employment
Once you have been admitted to doctoral studies, you will be employed as a doctoral student at the University of Gothenburg.
The provisions for employment as a doctoral student can be found in ordinance SFS 1993:100.
Initial employment as a doctoral student may apply for a maximum of one year, and may be renewed by a maximum of two years at a time.
A doctoral student may be employed as a doctoral student for a maximum of eight years, but the total period of employment may not be longer than the equivalent of full-time education at doctoral level for four years.
The University applies a local agreement on salaries for doctoral students.
Type of employment: Fixed-term employment, HF 5 kap 7 §
Extent: 100% full time
Location: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, division of Interaction Design and Software Engineering
First day of employment: 2026-09-01 or according to agreement
Please note, doctoral studies at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering require physical presence to conduct the studies. If the admitted applicant needs a residence permit for higher education to pursue studies in Sweden, the Department of Computer Science and Engineering has the right to revoke the admission decision if the applicant cannot present a valid residence permit no later than at the start of the studies.
Contact information
Information regarding the project, please contact Eric Knauss [email protected] or Miroslaw Staron [email protected]
Information regarding the position, please contact Eric Knauss [email protected]
Regarding the appointment procedure, please contact Jenny Lind [email protected]
Unions
Union representatives at the University of Gothenburg can be found here: https://www.gu.se/en/work-at-the-university-of-gothenburg/how-to-apply-for-a-position#collective-agreement-and-union-representatives
Application
You can apply to be admitted to doctoral education via the University of Gothenburg’s recruitment portal.
It is your responsibility to ensure that the application is complete as per this notice, and that the University receives it by the final application deadline.
The application is to be written in English and should include the following items:
- An application of a maximum of one A4 page summarizing your track record, outlining your research interests, and motivation for obtaining a PhD.
- Attested copies of education certificates, including grade reports and other documents
- Curriculum Vitae
- Letters of recommendation and name of reference persons (preferably at least 2)
- Evidence of written work: (links to) research papers and theses
- Links to software repositories with relevant projects
Applications must be received by: 2026-08-16
Information for International Applicants
Choosing a career in a foreign country is a big step. Thus, to give you a general idea of what we and Gothenburg have to offer in terms of benefits and life in general for you and your family/spouse/partner please visit:
https://www.gu.se/en/about-the-university/welcome-services
https://www.movetogothenburg.com/
The University works actively to achieve a working environment with equal conditions, and values the qualities that diversity brings to its operations. In accordance with the National Archives of Sweden’s regulations, the University must archive application documents for two years after the appointment is filled. If you request that your documents are returned, they will be returned to you once the two years have passed. Otherwise, they will be destroyed. In connection to this recruitment, we have already decided which recruitment channels we should use. We therefore decline further contact with vendors, recruitment and staffing companies.
