Vacancies

Location: Trinity College Dublin

School: School of Computer Science and Statistics

Funding for: EU and non-EU students

Funding amount: €25,000/year

Closing date: 24 May 2026 - 23:59 (Europe/Dublin)

PhD starting time: 1 September 2026

Project details: In financial services, machine-learning systems are increasingly used to support decisions such as whether to approve a loan, set a credit limit, or flag a case for review. A major challenge is that there is often not just one “best” model. Instead, many different models can perform almost equally well on the same data, while producing quite different outcomes for customers. One model may be simpler and easier to explain, another may be fairer across groups, and another may offer more realistic ways for a person to improve a future decision. This problem, known as model multiplicity, is especially important in high-stakes settings where small technical differences can lead to very different real-world consequences.

Full Details

Shortlisted candidates will be contacted during the week beginning 25 May 2026. Interviews are expected to take place during the week beginning 1 June 2026.

Early application is strongly recommended.

AI Engineering emerges from a fundamental shift in how we build software systems. Modern applications increasingly embed AI/ML components that generate substantial business value and/or ensure the correct operation of critical systems: Recommendation engines driving e-commerce revenue, LLMs powering intelligent interfaces, computer vision enabling medical diagnosis, predictive models informing financial decisions, and autonomous systems used in safety-critical environments like transportation and healthcare.
Unlike traditional code, where behaviour is explicitly specified through programmed logic, these AI components learn patterns from data, making their behaviour emergent rather than programmed. This fundamental difference introduces new engineering challenges around uncertainty, interpretability, and robustness. The complexity intensifies when multiple models are combined, or multiple AI agents collaborate to achieve intended system objectives, a scenario increasingly common in real-world deployments.

Some examples of potential research areas include:
• Software Engineering for AI-enabled systems: Adapting traditional techniques to handle the inherently different nature of AI/ML components—including requirements engineering for uncertainty, AI-aware software design, testing probabilistic systems and agentic AI systems, and ensuring reproducibility across evolving pipelines.
• Particular challenges arise when engineering approaches need to consider recent developments in AI, which are also under heavy demand in current industry practice, e.g., model refresh, continual learning, trustworthiness of AI, agentic AI, and agents pursuing long-term objectives.
• Optimisation and Metaheuristics: Multi-model, multi-agent, and whole-pipeline optimization, balancing accuracy with computational costs, and systematically exploring high-dimensional configuration spaces to discover non-obvious solutions.
• Model and System Evolution: Detecting and managing data and model drift, triggering appropriate retraining, and developing specialized CI/CD pipelines with statistical validation and rollout/rollback strategies.
• Systems Engineering: Taking a whole-systems perspective that considers interactions across data collection, training, inference, and monitoring—including multi-agent coordination, conflict resolution, and system-level guarantees despite individual agent uncertainty.

Full Details

Deadline: Rolling basis, with a deadline of 31 January 2026 for applicants who wish to begin before September 2026.

Conditions of the Award

The conditions are listed on the TCD website: https://www.tcd.ie/graduatestudies/awards/trda-school-based/

• Open only to new entrants to the full-time research doctorate register (EU and non EU).
• The holders must engage in full-time research and must register for a research doctorate degree at Trinity College, the University of Dublin.
• Continuation on the research register is dependent on evidence of satisfactory annual progress and successful completion of the confirmation process at 18 months after first registration.
• Both the doctorate researcher and supervisor will agree to participate in the pilot rollout of Trinity’s Supervisor: Research Student Agreement.
• Postgraduate Research Doctorate Awards cannot continue beyond a fourth year on the full-time research doctorate register and cannot be split across doctorate researchers.
• Decision on allocation of the award rests with the School.

Stipend details

The award includes a stipend of €25,000 p.a. and fees write-down  (EU or non-EU) for the four years (full-time) of a Structured PhD programme / research doctorate.

Application criteria

The award is expected to be very competitive, therefore the minimum requirement is a 2.1 honors (or equivalent) undergraduate degree and a distinction (or equivalent) MSc degree. Candidates without an MSc or a lower grade degree will not be considered. 

Application process

All application materials should be submitted by the prospective supervisor, no later than Friday 29th May, with the subject line “School-based Trinity Doctoral Research Award” to SCSS DTLP at gavin.doherty@tcd.ie, HoS at headscss@tcd.ie and Natasha Blanchfield at Natasha.Blanchfield@tcd.ie. 

Late or incomplete applications will not be considered.

Applications should contain the following in pdf format:

Provided by the candidate:

1.    Cover letter

2.    CV

3.    Undergraduate and postgraduate transcripts

4.    Proof of English language qualifications, if required (according to English language requirements on https://www.tcd.ie/study/apply/admission-requirements/postgraduate/index.php)

5.    2 academic reference letters

6.    2 page research proposal, to also address how does the proposed research fit within SCSS research themes and proposed supervisor’s interests

Post Summary

The Complex Software Lab at Trinity College Dublin invites applications for a Postdoctoral Researcher to work on QTest: Software Testing for Quantum Computing, a work programme funded under the LERO Research Ireland Research Centre for Software.

Quantum computing is emerging as a transformative paradigm, yet the software engineering and testing foundations required to ensure the reliability of quantum programs remain underdeveloped. This project addresses this gap by developing novel testing methodologies, frameworks, and tools specifically tailored for quantum software, accounting for properties such as non-determinism, superposition, entanglement, and noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices.

The successful candidate will conduct cutting-edge research at the intersection of software engineering, testing, and quantum computing, contributing to both fundamental research and open-source tooling, while collaborating with academic and industrial partners within LERO and beyond.

Post Summary

This position offers an exciting opportunity to join the Complex Software Lab in the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin, working on a research project focused on software quality, testing, and evaluation of modern AI‑supported systems.

The successful candidate will contribute to research on testing and evaluation techniques for AI‑assisted software, with particular emphasis on benchmarking, automated analysis, and empirical validation of system behaviour. The role involves hands‑on experimentation, implementation of evaluation pipelines, and analysis of system outputs, supporting high‑quality research outcomes.

This role is particularly well suited to candidates with a strong background in machine learning, NLP/LLMs, or AI evaluation, and an interest in rigorous benchmarking and reproducible experimentation.

We are seeking a highly motivated candidate for a fully funded postdoctoral researcher
position to work in 3D computer graphics and 3D computer vision.

The successful candidate will join the 3D Graphics and Vision research group led by
Prof. Binh-Son Hua at the School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College
Dublin, Ireland to work on topics related to generative AI in the 3D domain.

The School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin is a collegiate,
friendly, and research-intensive centre for academic study and research excellence. The
School has been ranked #1 in Ireland, top 25 in Europe, and top 100 Worldwide (QS
Subject Rankings 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021).

The postdoctoral researcher is expected to conduct fundamental research and publish
in top-tier computer vision and computer graphics conferences (CVPR, ECCV, ICCV,
SIGGRAPH) and journals (TPAMI, IJCV). Other responsibilities include supporting
graduate or undergraduate students with technical guidance and engagement in other
research activities such as paper reviews, reading group, workshop organization, etc.

The start date of the position will be as soon as possible. Contract duration is 1 year with
the option of renewing for a second year.

The successful candidate will require the following skills and knowledge:
• PhD in Computer Science or related fields;
• Strong tracked records in 3D computer graphics, 3D computer vision;
• Hands-on experience in training deep models and generative models is required;
• Hands-on experience and relevant skills in computer graphics and computer
vision application development such as OpenGL, OpenCV, CUDA, Blender is
desirable;
• Strong programming skills in C++, Python. Capability in implementing systems
from research papers and open-source software.
• Additional background in math, statistics, or physics is an advantage.

Full Description: Postdoctoral Researcher