We are looking for people interested in joining the Software Lab as a PhD student. The Software Lab conducts research at the intersection of software engineering, programming languages, artificial intelligence, and security, with a focus on tools and techniques for constructing reliable, efficient, and secure software. General areas of research include:

Artificial intelligence to reason about software (e.g., LLM agents for finding and fixing bugs)
Static and dynamic program analysis (e.g., to infer specifications)
Test input generation (e.g., to compare the behavior of old and new code via differential testing)

We focus on techniques that apply to real-world software systems. E.g., in the past, we have developed techniques that find and fix bugs in widely used Python, Java, C/C++, and JavaScript code bases, such as Scipy, the Java standard library, the Chrome browser, and various popular web sites.

PhD students will be hired at CISPA and eventually obtain their PhD from the University of Stuttgart. The workplace is in Stuttgart, which is where the lab is located.

Reasons for Joining the Software Lab

The Software Lab offers a unique chance to work in and shape an ambitious and international research group. We value quality over quantity, both in terms of group size and when choosing publication venues.
The lab is embedded into an excellent environment for research in computer science, with CISPA being a world-leading research center in security and privacy, and the University of Stuttgart being one of the top-ranked universities in Germany.
The city of Stuttgart is a cultural and intellectual center, surrounded by beautiful hills, and it has been ranked as one of the cities with the highest quality of life in the world.
The working language of the lab is English. Knowing German is not required.
PhD students at the University of Stuttgart have the opportunity to take courses but are not required to do so.
PhD students are paid a competitive salary (about 4,600 Euro per month in the first year, Bund E13 payscale).
Regular working hours (40 per week) and 30 days of paid time off per year.
Many PhD students visit major companies, e.g., Google, Microsoft, and IBM, for research internships during their PhD.
Graduates of the lab are offered highly competitive and attractive jobs in academia (e.g., as a faculty member at CISPA) and industry (e.g., as a software engineer at Google).

Additional Information

CISPA and the University of Stuttgart have a large interest in increasing the number of female researchers, and hence particularly encourages female candidates to apply. Applicants with a degree of disability of 50% or more will be preferred in case they are otherwise equally qualified to the other candidates. It is generally possible to work part time.

How to Apply?

Please send your application, including CV and transcripts of your studies, to software.lab.phd@gmail.com. There is no deadline. We are continuously looking for excellent people to join the lab. Positions will be filled as soon as we find suitable candidates.

CISPA/Uni Stuttgart

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