Research Fellow

Role Description

MOSAICO is a 3-year EU-funded research project that will develop the theoretical and technical framework needed to enable “AI agent communities” that can solve complex software engineering tasks by working together with each other, with non-AI agents (e.g. standard build processes), and with humans. MOSAICO will produce an integrated platform that handles communication, orchestration, governance, quality assessment, benchmarking and reuse of AI agents.

The Automated Software Engineering group at the University of York leads the MOSAICO work package dedicated to the design and development of an AI Agent Server Protocol (AISP) that enable AI agents to contribute to a wide range of software engineering activities (e.g. requirements engineering, analysis, implementation, or testing). AISP will be at the core of the integrated MOSAICO platform, becoming the lingua franca used by the other work packages on agent repositories, coordination and collaboration, governance, and use case-driven validation and evaluation.

Department

The Department of Computer Science at the University of York is a UK top ten research department, according to the Times Higher Education’s ranking of the REF 2021 results, with 100% of the research impact and research environment rated at 3* or higher. The Department hosts research groups on a broad range of subjects, including automated software engineering, artificial intelligence, or software engineering for robotics.

Role

You will join a team of several academics and research staff from the ASE group in York to contribute to the MOSAICO programme of work, leading the research and development of the AISP and reference implementations of clients (IDE extensions) and servers (integrations of AISP with existing AI and non-AI agents, such as LLMs or build tools). Given the high level of activity in this field, this role will also require maintaining an up-to-date understanding of the current state of the art on development of LLM-based applications, and the use of agent-oriented approaches for solving complex software engineering tasks, to ensure that the design of AISP accommodates the latest developments in the area.

The role requires collaborating with other MOSAICO partners, who may need assistance in using AISP for their research or industrial applications (as MOSAICO includes several industrial use cases). You will also be expected to regularly produce deliverables for MOSAICO, including project reports and redistributable software packages.

Skills, Experience & Qualification needed

• PhD in Computer Science or equivalent experience
• Knowledge in Software Engineering to engage in high quality research
• Ability to lead and/or take responsibility for a small research project or identified parts of a large project
• Ability to supervise the work of others, for example in research teams or projects
• Strong object-oriented software design and development skills
• Highly developed communication skills to engage effectively with a wide ranging audience, both orally and in writing, using a range of media
• Competency to collaboratively develop software, taking into account the needs of multiple stakeholders across academia and industry

Interview date: To be confirmed

For informal enquiries: please contact Dr. Antonio Garcia-Dominguez on a.garcia-dominguez@york.ac.uk

The University strives to be diverse and inclusive – a place where we can ALL be ourselves.

We particularly encourage applications from people who identify as Black, Asian or from a Minority Ethnic background, who are underrepresented at the University.

We offer family friendly, flexible working arrangements, with forums and inclusive facilities to support our staff. #EqualityatYork

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