AI for Science Engineer

80%-100%, Zurich, fixed-term

The ETH AI Center is one of the largest AI centers in Europe with over 130 Professors from all 16 departments of ETH Zurich and over 1500 associated PhD students & post-docs. Our mission is to foster interdisciplinary AI research and pave the way from science to society.

Project background

As AI for Science Engineer you build the frontier AI systems that help researchers across ETH accelerate their research with frontier AI. You will partner with research labs to understand their scientific challenges and co-develop agentic solutions: multi-step pipelines that plan and orchestrate simulations and experiments, curate data, evaluate models, or chain domain-specific tools in ways that weren't possible before.

This role is ideal for an engineer who wants to ship AI solutions, not just infrastructure — someone who sees a research challenge and immediately starts thinking about what combination of agents, models, and pipelines could solve it. Part of the work is carried out together with external research and industry partners.

Job description

• Partner with research labs across ETH to identify high-impact use cases for agentic AI and co-develop novel pipelines and tools.
• Build planning and orchestration components that turn research goals into executable workflows under constraints such as cost, latency, and fidelity, and adapt as new results come in.
• Make what the system does inspectable: traceable runs, reproducible results, and interfaces that let researchers understand and steer the work.
• Support research teams with data preparation and curation, and help them optimize, specialize, and deploy models — fine-tuning, distillation, quantization, and efficient inference.
• Contribute to the evaluation and benchmarking of AI systems on scientific tasks, including open and closed frontier AI models.
• Develop and open-source reusable recipes, reference architectures, and templates that lower the barrier for others to build on.
• Stay at the frontier of agentic AI: evaluate emerging frameworks, prototype new patterns, advise research teams.
• Contribute to teaching and student projects.

Profile

• Preferably a doctorate in computer science or a computational discipline; a master's degree with strong relevant experience is equally welcome. Our main counterparts are researchers, so being able to engage with them on their own terms matters.
• Experience building and deploying agentic or LLM-based systems end to end, not only using them - typically 1–3 years of relevant experience, though exceptional recent graduates are encouraged to apply too.
• Strong software and systems engineering skills: services, APIs, data pipelines, containers, CI/CD.
• Hands-on experience with modern AI/ML tooling (LLM APIs, agent frameworks, RAG pipelines, PyTorch, HuggingFace) and with model optimization and efficient inference.
• Experience with GPU computing and high-performance or distributed computing environments.
• Exposure to planning, scheduling, workflow engines, or reasoning systems, and to scientific computing workflows, is an advantage; open-source contributions are a strong plus.
• An effective communicator who bridges researchers and engineers — proactive, delivery-oriented, and keen to enable others to do their best work.
• Fluency in English.

Workplace

Workplace

We offer

If you are a highly motivated individual with a passion for AI and a desire to make a significant impact in a rapidly evolving field, we would love to hear from you. Join the ETH AI Center and work at the forefront of AI research in Europe, collaborating with leading faculty, global partners, and a rapidly growing ecosystem in Zurich.

ETH Zurich is a family-friendly employer with excellent working conditions. You can look forward to an exciting working environment, cultural diversity and attractive offers and benefits.

We value diversity and sustainability

In line with our values, ETH Zurich encourages an inclusive culture. We promote equality of opportunity, value diversity and nurture a working and learning environment in which the rights and dignity of all our staff and students are respected. Visit our Equal Opportunities and Diversity website to find out how we ensure a fair and open environment that allows everyone to grow and flourish. Sustainability is a core value for us – we are consistently working towards a climate-neutral future.

Curious? So are we.

We look forward to receiving your online application with the following documents:

• Resume
• Cover letter
• Any relevant portfolio or project samples

Further information about the ETH AI Center can be found on our website. Questions regarding the position should be directed to Arnout Devos [email protected] (no applications).

Please note that we exclusively accept applications submitted through our online application portal. Applications via email or postal services will not be considered.

We would like to point out that the pre-selection is carried out by the responsible recruiters and not by artificial intelligence.

For recruitment services the GTC of ETH Zurich apply.