PhD Position Automated Code Refactoring at the Future of Software Engineering (FUSE) lab

Want to rethink the future of software engineering at scale? Join researchers from TU Delft and Meta Platforms as a PhD student in the newly established FUSE Lab!

Job Description

As generative artificial intelligence is transforming the daily work of software engineers, TU Delft and the Meta Dev Infra team join forces in a research lab to investigate how we can leverage AI to advance the daily experience and productivity of software engineers at the scale of Meta's tens of thousands of software engineers.

Across several tracks, we will develop tools that rethink the future of software engineering. Our work will be informed by sound theories and supported by empirical data. In this project, we will use AI as an opportunity and address the challenges that emerge due to AI. Our goal is to conduct rigorous research, apply our results in practice at Meta, and to educate the students of TU Delft about the new insights we gather. We will focus on open science, sharing our results to help developers across the world.

Automated Code Refactoring

The focus is on exploring and evaluating the potential of LLM-based automated refactoring of codebases with the ultimate goal of reducing software complexity and improving code quality. We will investigate how LLMs can support and automate tasks such as enhancing maintainability and performance while also reducing technical debt and facilitating bug detection and bug fixing. The main modules include:

• Capturing practitioners' experiences and expectations to establish a roadmap
• Developing models and benchmarks for LLM-based refactoring
• Designing autonomous agents
• Conducting studies to analyse real-world impact

The PhD positions will be fully at TU Delft, with strong collaboration with Meta.

Job Requirements

Required (by the Graduate School of TU Delft):

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, or a related field.
• Proficiency in the English language.

Additional requirements:

• Research focus, characterized by curiosity, data fluency, and critical thinking
• Engineering mindset, including ability to create experimental prototypes and demonstrators
• Team player, good listener, and ready to help

Conditions of Employment

Doctoral candidates will be offered a 4-year period of employment in principle, but in the form of 2 employment contracts. An initial 1.5 year contract with an official go/no go progress assessment within 15 months. Followed by an additional contract for the remaining 2.5 years assuming everything goes well and performance requirements are met.

Salary and benefits are in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities, increasing from €3059 - €3881 gross per month, from the first year to the fourth year based on a fulltime contract (38 hours), plus 8% holiday allowance and an end-of-year bonus of 8.3%.

As a PhD candidate you will be enrolled in the TU Delft Graduate School. The TU Delft Graduate School provides an inspiring research environment with an excellent team of supervisors, academic staff and a mentor. The Doctoral Education Programme is aimed at developing your transferable, discipline-related and research skills.

The TU Delft offers a customisable compensation package, discounts on health insurance, and a monthly work costs contribution. Flexible work schedules can be arranged.