Research Engineer (fixed-term)

Department of Ecology The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) is one of Northern Europe largest academic hubs for ecological research and offers a dynamic and excellent research environment with modern infrastructure. The Department of Ecology has about 150 employees, of whom around 40 work at the Grimsö Research Station in Bergslagen. Together, the SLU Ecology Centre and Grimsö Research Station conduct research on sustainable agriculture and forestry, plant protection, nature conservation, and wildlife management, and provide scientific knowledge to inform Sweden and Europe’s environmental policies.   About the position Project Can we foresee the outcomes of public policies, political choices and other decisions? We are finding out by developing serious games and running them using AI. We are building large-scale simulations of societal processes (environmental negotiations, nature conservation policies, and hybrid-threat scenarios) in which every actor is an autonomous AI agent powered by Large Language Models (LLMs). These agents simulate real-world stakeholders, from government ministers to interest groups, and interact through natural language in complex strategic settings. We then run thousands of iterations to map the distribution of outcomes. This effort is part of a new research program Articulating Complexity ( https://www.slu.se/articulating-complexity/). We are looking for an ambitious post-doc to join this effort. Tasks and duties You are the person who makes the simulations meaningful. The technical infrastructure produces outputs in the form of thousands of LLM-generated texts from prompts. Your job is to ensure that these outputs are grounded in real human behavior, real political dynamics, and real institutional logic. Concretely this means: Scenario architecture. Each simulation is defined by a scenario with an initial world state, a cast of agents, communication channels, institutional constraints, document corpora. You will design scenarios focusing on negotiations of nature conservation policies and socio-ecological hybrid warfare. Agent persona construction. For each agent you will define the identity prompt, ideology vector, personality traits, decision mode weights, and the affect parameters that govern when agents escalate beyond their default moderation. This means extracting positions, rhetorical styles, strategic preferences, and psychological profiles from real-world sources. Analysis and validation of simulation outputs. After Monte Carlo runs, you will analyze the distribution of outcomes (e.g. which policies emerge) and will also design behavioural signature validation (e.g. verifying that simulated agents exhibit the expected action distributions when compared against empirical baselines). Publication and dissemination. You will co-author scientific publications from the project. The research will produce papers at the intersection of computational social science, ecology, security studies, and AI, a space with very few competitors and high visibility.  You will work closely with the PI (Guillaume Chapron https://www.slu.se/en/profilepages/c/guillaume-chapron/%20) and a research engineer in AI (recruited concurrently). The three of you will form the core team. Your profile Required A PhD in computational social science (or political science, psychology, behavioural economics, evolutionary anthropology or a related field) with strong quantitative skills. The PhD must be completed by the start date. Ability to reflect about strategic behaviour, political dynamics, or social processes in a structured, analytical way, whether through formal models, experiments or quantitative analysis. Willingness to work with AI and LLMs. You should be comfortable working critically with AI-generated outputs, interpreting how LLMs respond to instructions, and contributing to the design, testing, and refinement of prompts. Strong writing skills: clarity, precision, and the ability to communicate across disciplinary boundaries. Desirable Experience with agent-based modelling, game theory, simulation, or experimental methods in the social sciences. Experience with LLMs and their capabilities for simulating human behaviour such as the emerging literature on "silicon samples" and next-generation social simulations. Understanding of institutional design, legislative procedures, or multi-level governance. The simulation enforces procedural constraints, and designing these correctly requires knowing how real institutions actually work. Reading proficiency in Swedish, not required but an advantage. Assessment criteria Applications will be assessed on the following: Intellectual depth and originality. We are looking for someone who has demonstrated the ability to produce genuinely novel ideas, not incremental extensions of existing work. Your PhD thesis, publications, or research statement should show that you think independently and are drawn to hard, underexplored scientific problems. Interdisciplinary range. The ideal candidate is not easily captured by a single disciplinary label. If your work connects political behaviour, psychology, strategic interaction, and computational methods, even in an unconventional way, you are more interesting to us than a narrow specialist with a longer publication list. Fit with the project’s ambition. This is a project that aims to pioneer a new field and we want someone who finds that proposition thrilling rather than risky. Your application should make clear why this project, not just why a postdoc. Because the research area is new, you also need to be able to work in relative isolation. Cross-discipline disposition. You will work daily with questions from very different disciplines: computer science, AI, ecology, political science, geopolitics. The ability to communicate across disciplinary silos is essential. Interpersonal skills will form an important part of the assessment. Location: The position is based either at Grimsö or at Uppsala, with a possibility to be partly based at another Swedish academic institution with a core expertise in computational social science. Form of employment: Fixed-term employment 24 months, with possibility of extension. Scope: 100%. Start date: As agreed, as soon as possible after recruitment. Application: Please submit your application before deadline 14 July 2026. You can submit your application by clicking the button below. Application requirements are available on the SLU website.

WHO WE ARE Luxembourg National Data Service (LNDS) is a brand of PNED G.I.E. an organisation created by the Luxembourg Government, to implement Luxembourg’s strategies in research, innovation, and digitalisation. LNDS enables value creation from secondary use of data, for public and private partners and supports the sharing and re-use of public sector data, in a trustable manner. The LNDS service portfolio includes know-how, capabilities, tools, infrastructure, and data services. Through efficient & responsible use of data and improving the secondary use of data, LNDS will support the acceleration of economic, ecological, and societal transitions. www.lnds.lu | LNDS on LinkedIn PURPOSE OF THE JOB / PROJECT As a DevOps engineer, you will play a key role in the improvement and innovation of our IT solutions for health data. You will be part of a dynamic agile team that focuses on delivering high quality services to our clients and partners. You will also have the opportunity to collaborate with teams around Europe on the Health Data Access Bodies (HDAB) project, a large scale initiative that aims to enable access to health data across Europe for secondary purposes. The HDAB project is establishing a network of trusted entities that can facilitate the access to health data, respecting the privacy and consent of the data providers and users. HDAB-LU: This 4-year project, which started in January 2024, aims to develop and deploy the Health Data  Access Body of Luxembourg, which is the national authority responsible for granting access to health data for secondary use as set out in The European Data Governance Act (DGA) and the European Health Data Space (EHDS). Its general objective is to enable Luxembourg to establish and deploy services for its HDAB, at minimum: • processing and management of data access applications, • supporting secure processing of health data by data users,  • making sure that they are well integrated in the EHDS,  • establishing and aligning with EU standards, and providing cross-border connections for large-scale deployment of HealthData@EU on the basis of the work conducted by the joint action TEHDaS. WHAT YOU WILL DO • Design, implement and maintain the HDAB and related tools at the European and national levels  as part of the NinjaOps team. • Configure and manage the HDAB operational services. • Ensure the HDAB and services are reliable, scalable, and secure, following security- and privacy by-design best practices. • Support the development team with agile software development and deployment practices. • Monitor, troubleshoot and resolve issues related to the HDAB and services. • Improve the quality and efficiency of the HDAB and services with automation, testing, and  feedback mechanisms. • Document the HDAB and services, as well as their deployment and operations processes and  procedures. • Research and evaluate new technologies and solutions for the HDAB project's objectives and  capabilities • Represent the LNDS and collaborate with other teams and stakeholders to understand the HDAB project's requirements and expectations and provide technical support and guidance. WHO YOU ARE • MSc in a scientific, technological, or engineering discipline related to computer science,  information technology, or computing • 2 to 5 years of relevant experience with programming, deployment, and maintenance of web  applications, as well as Linux systems and web servers’ administration • Experience in research environment or projects • Working knowledge of computer security threats and methods of their prevention • Working knowledge of security- and privacy-by-design principles • Experience with system administration Linux (RHEL/Ubuntu) and Windows machines • Working knowledge in shell/bash • Proven experience with setting up continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) pipelines • Good knowledge of git vcs, git platforms and IAAS tooling (e.g. Terraform) • Experience with containerization (Docker, Podman) and provisioning tools (Ansible) • Experience with static page generators (e.g. Jekyll, Hugo) • Working knowledge of authentication protocols like OpenID Connect, SAML or LDAP/AD, and  solutions like Keycloak • Experience in profiling, fine-tuning and optimization of applications • Good verbal and written communication skills with the abilities to well articulate the technical  needs and to work within an interdisciplinary setting and communicate with external partners • Creative, solution oriented with good analytical skills and a mindset for quality • You have critical thinking, you are adaptable, flexible and you are able to accept and manage  changes in the workplace • You have cultural intelligence and diversity consciousness • Excellent communication skills in English • Working knowledge of one of Luxembourg’s official languages (French, German or  Luxembourgish) is a plus