"PhD Fellowship in Applied Information Technology: Software Engineering Foundations for LLM-Enabled Agentic Systems"

About the position

Kristiania University of Applied Sciences is offering a fully funded PhD fellowship in Applied Information Technology. The successful applicant will be included in a team of researchers with ambitious plans to further develop research and pedagogical activities related to Applied Information Technology at the university.

The PhD project should aim to establish software engineering foundations for LLM-enabled agentic systems including architecture, assurance, and operations.

The candidate will:

• Define architecture and design patterns (planner–executor–critic, retrieval-first/tool-first, escalation trees) with selection guidelines and anti-patterns
• Introduce specification and guardrailing mechanisms (schema/contract DSLs, policy-aware tool use, pre/postconditions) that prevent tool misuse and unsafe actions
• Develop testing methods for non-deterministic multi-step workflows (unit tests for tools, scenario tests for plans, metamorphic and differential oracles, agent fuzzing)
• Engineer configuration policies for accuracy–latency–energy trade-offs (routing, budget caps, early-exit) with quantitative evaluation on canonical software engineering tasks (code generation/repair, log analysis, vulnerability triage)

The outcome will be a validated pattern catalog, a spec/guard toolkit, an agent test harness with coverage metrics, an open telemetry schema + replay tool, and a public benchmark with multi-objective metrics (accuracy, robustness, safety, latency, energy/CO₂), released as open-source artifacts and demonstrated in at least one industry-grade case study.

The candidates must have:

• Master’s degree (120 ECTS or equivalent) in a relevant subject area with a grade B or better on the master’s thesis and for the master’s degree overall. The master’s thesis must be a minimum of 30 ECTS or equivalent. The relevance of the subject areas is dependent on the type of project proposed by the candidate
• Relevant 180 ECTS bachelor’s degree
• Solid software engineering skills (clean architecture, testing, version control, CI/CD)
• Strong programming in Python (and comfort with TypeScript/Java helpful)
• Practical experience with modern ML/LLM stacks (PyTorch/Transformers and at least one agent framework such as LangGraph/AutoGen/LangChain)
• Basic statistics/experimental design
• Analytical thinking and enthusiasm for interdisciplinary research
• Proficiency in both written and spoken English (interviews and all communication will be in English)

Ideally, candidates should have:

• Competence in empirical evaluation and reproducible research (experiment design, statistics, benchmarking)
• Familiarity with MLOps (containers, orchestration, monitoring), cloud/GPUs
• Exposure to security/compliance (GDPR/AI Act), energy/latency measurement, or IoT/digital twins

Personal qualities:

• Curiosity and a strong motivation to carry out independent interdisciplinary research
• Good communication and cooperation skills
• The ability, desire and capacity to work independently, systematically, and purposefully
• Orientation toward the completion of projects and the attainment of goals

Emphasis will be placed on personal suitability for the position.

Benefits:

• High salary compared to international standards (NOK 550,800 per year)
• Equipment at your disposal during employment (e.g., high-end laptop, mobile and mobile subscription)
• NOK 50,000 per year to support travel to conferences and other running costs
• Free health insurance, travel insurance, and pension plan
• Strong labour laws (e.g., fully paid parental and sick leaves, 25 paid days of vacation and paid sick leave)

The application must include:

• Motivation letter for the position
• Approved diplomas and transcripts (in Scandinavian or English language)
• CV
• At least two references
• Master’s thesis
• A project proposal of up to 4 pages (max. 2,000 words, excluding references), written in English, outlining the candidate’s intended PhD research in relation to the described PhD project, including background, relevant literature, objectives, methods and expected contributions

Admission to the PhD programme is a requirement for taking up a position as a research fellow. The application must be submitted to the School of Doctoral Studies within three months of the start date. For more information, see the Regulations relating to conditions of appointment for research fellowships.

The PhD fellowship period is 3 years, and the earliest start date is 01.09.2026.

Working place is the School of Economics, Innovation, and Technology. The school is located in Oslo, with numerous amenities, recreational spaces and urban fun right next door.

Kristiania University of Applied Sciences welcomes and encourages applications from diverse backgrounds. Women and persons with minority background are particularly encouraged to apply.

For more information about Kristiania. To learn more about the PhD in Applied Information Technology, visit: https://www.kristiania.no/en/research/phd.

Application deadline: 13.04.2026.

Only applications received through our application portal will be considered.

Kontaktpersoner:

Ahmet Soylu

Dekan, School of Doctoral Studies

ahmet.soylu@kristiania.no

Asle Fagerstrøm

Head of program/Professor

asle.fagerstrom@kristiania.no