Post-Doctoral Position on Techniques for Detecting and Removing Security Vulnerabilities in Software - Hiring in process/Finished, not possible to apply

The Department of Information Technology has a leading position in research and education. The Department currently has about 280 employees, including 120 teachers and 110 PhD students. More than 4000 students study one or more courses at the department each year. More info: http://www.it.uu.se

Duties: The candidate will perform research to develop techniques for detecting and removing security vulnerabilities in software, and applying these techniques in software for IoT devices. Since the exploitation of vulnerabilities in such software can cause huge damages (e.g., the forming of malicious botnets), it must be bug-free and correctly implement security services.  Techniques in the scope of the project include program analysis, verification, symbolic execution, testing using fuzzing, taint analysis, and model learning.  The goals include to significantly extend the power and scalability of such techniques to make the applicable to real-world code bases; on foreseen application is to analyze the widely-used IoT OS Contiki.

A Post-Doctoral position is time-limited for a maximum of two years, and may include some teaching (at most 20%).

Environment: The positions are funded by the recent five-year grant aSSIsT: Secure Software for the Internet of Things (https://assist-project.github.io/), supported by SSF (the Foundation for Strategic Research), which brings together several groups at Uppsala University (Bengt Jonsson, Parosh Abdulla, Mohammed Faouzi Atig, Philipp Ruemmer, Kostis Sagonas, Wang Yi) that are world-renowned in the fields of automated verification, programming language implementation, and testing. Contributions include the UPPAAL model checker, high-impact techniques and tools for testing and verification of multithreaded software, including Concuerror and Nidhugg, and the native-code compiler and several tools for the Erlang programming language. Members received the CAV (Computer-Aided Verification) Award, the most prestigious academic award in the area, both in 2013 (Wang Yi) and in 2017 (Parosh Abdulla and Bengt Jonsson).  The work is performed in collaboration with partners at RISE SICS (Luca Mottola, Shahid Raza, Thiemo Voigt) including developers of the ConTiki OS, and the SICS Security lab.

Requirements: A Post-Doctoral position requires a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent. The degree should typically have been obtained not more than three years ago. A successful candidate should have a strong research experience in some of the fields: program analysis, compiler techniques, model checking, formal verification, testing, security, software engineering, and similar, as well as be proficient in building software systems and tools. The applicant must have good skills in spoken and written English.

Criteria for ranking: When ranking several qualified applicants, scientific skills will be of primary importance. The university aims to recruit the person who, in the combined evaluation of competence, skills and documented qualification, is judged most suitable to independently carry out and develop the work at hand, and to contribute to a positive development of the aSSIsT project and the department.

Application: Applications should include a description of research interests and past experience, including a motivation for applying for this position, a CV, copies of exams, degrees and grades, a copy of Ph.D. thesis (or a draft thereof), relevant publications, and other relevant documents. Applications should be accompanied by at least two letter(s) of recommendation and contact information to reference persons, as well as earliest feasible starting date of employment.

About working in Sweden: Sweden is a fantastic place for living and working. Swedes are friendly and speak excellent English. The quality of life is high, with a strong emphasis on outdoor activities. The Swedish working climate emphasizes an open atmosphere, with active discussions involving both junior and senior employees. Healthcare incurs only small fees. Parental benefits allow 13 months of parental leave, extending the length of employment correspondingly. Childcare is of high quality and very affordable.

Uppsala University strives to be an inclusive workplace that promotes equal opportunities and attracts qualified candidates who can contribute to the University’s excellence and diversity. We welcome applications from all sections of the community and from people of all backgrounds.

The department is striving to achieve a more equal gender balance and female candidates are particularly invited to apply.

Salary: Individually negotiated salary.

Starting date: As soon as possible or as otherwise agreed.

Type of position: Temporary full-time position for 2 years.

For further information about the position please Contact Bengt Jonsson (bengt.jonsson@it.uu.se) and Kostis Sagonas (kostis@it.uu.se).

Please submit your application by 25 March 2019, UFV-PA 2019/568.

Are you considering moving to Sweden to work at Uppsala University? If so, you will find a lot of information about working and living in Sweden at www.uu.se/joinus. You are also welcome to contact International Faculty and Staff Services at ifss@uadm.uu.se.