Postdoctoral Researcher in Computer Science with focus on High Quality Synthetic Data

Description 

Would you like to conduct research at the exciting intersection of artificial intelligence, data quality, and privacy, together with a dedicated team of researchers and industrial practitioners?

We are hiring a Postdoctoral Researcher (PostDoc) to join us in research and teaching around the themes of generation and assessment of synthetic data. The position’s duties include conducting research experiments, documenting and publishing research results, collaborating with our industry partners, and supporting teaching activities in the domains listed above.

As a postdoctoral researcher in this position, you will have the opportunity to develop your creative and innovative ideas in these contexts. You will be working closely with the SQuaD (“Software Quality and Digital Modernization”) research group, part of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, which provides a vibrant, inspiring, collaborative, and highly international environment for your work.

Due to the postdoctoral appointment nature as a career-development position for junior researchers, we are looking for candidates who have completed their PhD no more than three years before the application deadline. The position is offered for a period of two years, with the possibility of an extension of one year.

Duties

In this position, your major task will be to collect and analyse real-world datasets provided by our project partners, apply different data synthetisation approaches to these, and extract meaningful indicators for data quality achieved on the resulting synthesised datasets. Based on this, you will help define sound quality and privacy estimators and guidance documents for characterising different data synthetisation approaches, performed in close collaboration with our research project team members. You will monitor the evolution of synthetic data generation approaches, specifically in the fields of artificial intelligence and/or statistical analysis methods, to identify novel approaches of relevance with respect to the project's results. You will help documenting, publishing, and presenting these results in appropriate scientific venues, as well as in the required project result documents.

To achieve this, you will be closely collaborating with the project team at the university and our partners. You require good English skills as it is the working language in the project consortium. You are expected to collaborate with the wider community for a mutual exchange, as well as work towards ensuring that the knowledge and expertise available at the university is of benefit to society. Participation in teaching, e.g., through contributions in courses or supervision of student theses and projects on topics relevant to the project, is a mandatory part of this position.

To contribute to a positive work environment and further the department’s activities, you are expected to be a present and active part of the day-to-day operations and workplace community. Arrangements for part-time remote work can be made under special circumstances upon approval and if the work tasks permit.

Qualification requirements

To be eligible for the postdoctoral appointment, applicants are required to hold a PhD in computer science or a related subject or have equivalent qualifications from abroad. The PhD must be completed before a decision to appoint an applicant is made. The candidate must have completed the degree no more than three years before the application deadline. Qualifications obtained earlier may be considered if there are special grounds, such as sick leave, parental leave, clinical service, service as a union representative, military service or similar, or service/assignment of relevance to the appointment. Good knowledge of English, both spoken and written, is a requirement as it is the working language of the project.

Assessment criteria

Special weight will be given to documented expertise in conducting research in the context of the project, i.e., in the areas of synthetic data, data quality, and data-driven artificial intelligence. Moreover, special weight will be given to the documented ability to publish research results in these areas.

Considerable weight will be given to documented knowledge and expertise in general artificial intelligence, data and software engineering, preparing and conducting academic teaching, and experience in data protection assessment. Additionally, considerable weight will be given to documented experience in collaborating with academic and industrial partners in research projects and other collaborations.

Considerable weight will also be given to personal qualities such as the ability to cooperate, the willingness to take responsibility, and a constructive and professional attitude towards colleagues and students.

Weight will be given to documented experience in software development and programming, experience in collaborating with, and documenting research results to, the wider society, and experience in working abroad and/or working in national and international networks.

Good knowledge of Swedish is a valuable qualification. Teaching experience in artificial intelligence, software engineering, data science and engineering, or privacy and security is also considered valuable qualifications.

Terms 

Fixed-term full-time employment of 2 years, with the possibility of extension for a maximum of one year. Starting at the earliest convenience.

Application

Submit the application via the University’s web-based recruitment tool, Varbi. Applicants are responsible for submitting a complete application in accordance with the advertisement, for providing translations of any documents written in a language other than Swedish, Norwegian, Danish or English, and for ensuring that the documentation allows for objective and qualitative assessments. A complete application should be submitted by the application deadline. An incomplete application may jeopardise a fair assessment of qualifications.

The application should include: 

• CV
• cover letter describing the applicant’s qualifications and research interests in relation to the duties of the position
• list of publications (in multi-authored publications, the role of the applicant must be specified)
• copy of PhD degree or information on when it is expected to be completed
• copy of doctoral thesis and other relevant publications
• statement of language skills
• two references, at least one of which is a current or former supervisor 

Attach all the documents and publications you wish to be considered to the electronic application (do not just provide links). Name each uploaded document to clearly indicate its content.

Documents that cannot be submitted electronically, such as books or publications, should be sent to:

Karlstads universitet 
Hanna Ljungdahl 
651 88 Karlstad
Sweden 

State the reference number: REK2026/16 

Application deadline: March 8, 2026

We look forward to your application! 

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