Postdoctoral or PhD Researcher in Verification-First AI and Evaluation of Agentic Systems at TU Darmstadt Technische Universität Darmstadt in Germany

UKP Lab at Technische Universität Darmstadt is hiring a Postdoctoral or Doctoral (PhD) Researcher in verification-first AI and evaluation of agentic systems. The role is led by Prof. Iryna Gurevych, a leading researcher in NLP and AI.

The research focus is on making AI agents and large language models more trustworthy through rigorous evaluation and safety methods. Topics include reference-free evaluation, expert-preference-based evaluation, trajectory-level reliability, failure detection for tool-using agents, calibration, and meta-evaluation of LLM-as-judge methods.

This opportunity is especially relevant for candidates interested in natural language processing, machine learning, computer science, large language models, agentic systems, and AI safety. The post is full-time under TV-TU E13, initially for 2 years with extension possible, and starts as soon as possible.

Eligibility highlights: applicants should have a PhD or Master's degree in NLP / ML / CS, experience with LLM evaluation, agents, or RL/optimisation, a strong publication record (e.g. ACL, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, EMNLP), and solid engineering skills.

Deadline: 24 July 2026. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, so early submission is recommended.

How to apply: submit your application via the UKP portal, quote the reference to this post, and include a motivation letter, CV, transcripts/certificates, and relevant publications or recommendation letters.