Senior Lecturer and Team Lead Reinforcement Learning for Robotics and Autonomous Learning Systems 50 – 100 %

With your convincing personality and scientific excellence, you impact research, teaching and continuing education in one of the most dynamic areas of AI. You want to lead and shape – we offer you the freedom to do this.

School: School of Engineering

Starting date: February 2025 or by mutual agreement / Application deadline: 30.11.2024

• Research & Development: You shape an independent, method-focused and application-oriented agenda in research and development of national and international appeal that creates impact. Thereby, based on your experience and academic track record, you locate yourself in the field of (deep) reinforcement learning as it applies to mobile robots and other autonomous learning systems (e.g., software-based agents, machine learning on and for robotic platforms, humanoids and their interaction with humans).
• Teaching: You develop and teach basic and advanced modules in the bachelor's degree programmes in Computer Science and Data Science, at Master's and PhD level and/or in continuing education. Your outstanding teaching style continuously attracts excellent students to your research group. The share of teaching (incl. direct supervision of students) makes up ca. 50% of your workload.
• Leadership: You build up your own research group and lead it in terms of personnel and finances. Through successful funding acquisition (e.g., EU, Innosuisse, SNF) and as principal investigator you ensure sustainable growth. As a member of the centre board, you take responsibility for the management of activities at the CAI and take the initiative in specialist committees, associations and the public.
• We are looking for a dynamic personality with charisma who has an excellent international reputation in applied sciences and drives programs and projects at the CAI. Use cases for your research interests include a broad range of applications, from AI agents to autonomous mobile systems (humanoid, airborne or ground-based).
• You have a university degree with a doctorate in computer science or a related field with specialist socialization within artificial intelligence / machine learning as it applies to robotics.
• In addition, you have acquired several years of professional experience in specialist and preferably also leadership positions in industry, have a track record in the acquisition and management of complex research projects and possess a corresponding network in Switzerland and Europe.
• Experience in the field of public speaking or teaching/didactics is a great advantage; enjoying teaching is obligatory.
• We expect a high degree of independence and self-motivation, initiative and enthusiasm, enjoyment of challenging current issues and a customer- and results-oriented approach to work, as well as very good English and ideally written and spoken German language skills.
• In return, we offer you the opportunity to jointly shape the young research centre in a leading capacity, an unoccupied lab space (one of only two at the centre), and we offer you a great deal of freedom, also with regard to working hours and locations (up to 50% home office). The compatibility of family and career is very important to us.

Zurich University of Applied Sciences ZHAW is one of Switzerland's largest multidisciplinary universities of applied sciences, with over 14'000 students and 3'400 faculty and staff.

As one of the leading educational and research institutions in Switzerland, the School of Engineering (SoE) focuses on topics relevant to the future. 14 institutes and centres guarantee high-quality education, research and development with a focus on the areas of energy, mobility, information and health.

The Centre for Artificial Intelligence (CAI) maintains a growing number of research groups in the areas of Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, Perception and Cognition, Autonomous Learning Systems, Trustworthy AI and AI Engineering (see our key areas of research). The CAI conducts methods-oriented applied research and development at the highest level in the field of machine learning and is committed to a human-centred approach to artificial intelligence, which actively shapes the ethical dimension.

For this position, a combination with a demanding expert and leadership role in practice (at least 50% part-time workload at the ZHAW) or a co-lecturership together with a person with a complementary profile (job sharing) is also possible.

ZHAW is committed to gender-mixed and diverse teams in order to promote equality, diversity and innovation. In order to increase the proportion of women in management positions, applications from women are particularly welcome.

Please upload your complete application documents (incl. letter of motivation) via our online platform. Applications via e-mail cannot be considered.

Wir bieten hochschulgerechte Arbeits- und Anstellungsbedingungen an und fördern aktiv die Personalentwicklung unserer Mitarbeitenden und Führungspersonen. Eine detaillierte Beschreibung der Vorteile ist auf der Webseite «Arbeiten an der ZHAW» zu finden. Hier die wichtigsten Eckpunkte:

Prof. Dr. Thilo Stadelmann

Head, Center for AI (CAI)

Tanja Schmid

Recruiting Manager