EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, is one of the most dynamic university campuses in Europe and ranks among the top 20 universities worldwide. The EPFL employs more than 6,500 people supporting the three main missions of the institutions: education, research and innovation. The EPFL campus offers an exceptional working environment at the heart of a community of more than 18,500 people, including over 14,000 students and 4,000 researchers from more than 120 different countries.

Senior Data Scientist (W/M)

About the Swiss Data Science Center (SDSC)

The Swiss Data Science Center (SDSC) is a strategic focus area of the ETH domain, with EPFL and ETH Zurich as founding partners, developing into a National Research Infrastructure in 2025. Its mission is to support academic labs, hospitals, industry and public sector stakeholders, including cantonal and federal administrations, through their entire data science journey, from the collection and management of data to machine learning, AI, and industrialization. With a large multidisciplinary team of professionals across three locations (Lausanne, Zurich, Villigen), the SDSC provides expertise and services to various domains, such as health and biomedical sciences, energy and sustainability, climate and environment, and large-scale scientific infrastructures. More: www.datascience.ch

The Research team is responsible for research collaborations in the academic and public sector. See https://datascience.ch/academic-projects/ for an idea of some of our academic research collaborations.

Mission

As a Senior Data Scientist working in the Research team of the Swiss Data Science Center, you will use your expertise in machine learning, statistical data science, computer vision, natural language processing, and signal processing to work closely with researchers, experts and other collaborators from academia or the public sector in Switzerland, working in various fields, such as health and biomedical sciences, climate and environment, energy and sustainability, physical and engineering sciences, and digital society. You will help them identify how to analyze or model their data to answer precise scientific questions or develop algorithms that perform automatically some challenging tasks.

This typically involves exchanging actively with collaborators and domain experts to understand the precise desiderata of the project, translating them into data science terms, determining which approaches and formulations are most effective to achieve the desired goals, implement the corresponding algorithms, perform the evaluations hand-in-hand with the domain experts, and eventually release open-source code and the associated documentation, write research papers or technical reports as appropriate, and contribute to the communication of the results.

 

Main duties and responsibilities include

  • Working on data science projects with collaborators from the academic and public sector.

You will also contribute to:

  • Advising MSc Students.
  • Evaluating project proposals.

 

Profile

The ideal candidate:

  • Holds a PhD in machine learning, statistics, computer vision, natural language processing, signal processing, or optimization.
  • Has practical experience in using machine learning models in concrete applications.
  • Has experience in interdisciplinary collaborations and of real-world applications is desirable.
  • Is proficient in Python, PyTorch, and familiar with state-of-the-art models and architectures.

We offer

  • A stimulating, collaborative, cross-disciplinary environment in a world-class research institution, where you will be part of a team of 40 data scientists from more than 15 different countries. We all work towards applying and developing novel ML methods to solve real-world problems.
  • We value work-life balance. 
  • You will be able to publish your research in collaboration with experts from different fields in top-ranked journals and conferences.
  • You will have the opportunity to help supervise student projects.
  • We encourage experimentation and creativity by actively promoting learning of new technologies and approaches on the job.
  • Your opinion will always matter.

Informations

Contract Start Date : 01/10/2025 

Activity Rate : 100.00 

Contract Type: CDD

Duration: 1 year renewable 

Reference: 1731 

Contact

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

Questions regarding the position should be directed to Mathieu Salzmann (mathieu.salzmann@epfl.ch) or Guillaume Obozinski (guillaume.obozinski@sdsc.ethz.ch) (no applications).

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