PhD Student in Applied ML and NLP

Description

As part of the SNSF-funded project “Responsible AI for the Swiss Judiciary”, we work on real-world applications of artificial intelligence for the Swiss judiciary in close collaboration with courts and partners across Switzerland. We are looking for a PhD Student in Applied ML and NLP. This doctoral position is part of the SNSF-funded project “Responsible AI for the Swiss Judiciary” at ETH Zurich. The project develops and evaluates AI-based prototypes to support judicial decision-making, with a focus on real-world applicability. It combines machine learning, legal applications, and empirical evaluation in collaboration with judicial partners. The project offers a unique opportunity to work on real-world, high-stakes AI systems in collaboration with courts, combining cutting-edge AI research with impactful societal applications.

The doctoral researcher will focus on the development and evaluation of AI-based research prototypes for legal applications, with a strong emphasis on technical implementation and real-world deployment.

Responsibilities

Core responsibilities include:

• Developing and implementing AI systems for legal text processing and decision support (e.g., LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation, agentic systems)
• Building production-quality prototypes suitable for pilot deployment in judicial settings, including robust retrieval systems, LLM pipelines, and evaluation infrastructure
• Designing and running systematic evaluations of model performance, robustness, and reliability
• Building datasets, benchmarks, and pipelines for legal AI applications
• Improving model architectures, prompting strategies, and retrieval systems for high-stakes environments
• Conducting pilot evaluations with judicial partners to study how AI tools perform in real decision-making workflows, and translating findings into technical improvements (e.g., new embedding methods, agent architectures, prompting strategies)
• Publishing research results in leading venues in artificial intelligence and computational social science
• The position is designed for a cumulative PhD with a strong methodological and technical focus
• Our offices are located in downtown Zurich, and the working languages are German and English

Qualifications

We are looking for candidates who combine strong ML/NLP fundamentals with hands-on engineering skills; someone who understands how models work under the hood and can also build reliable, deployable systems. You:

• Must hold a master’s degree in computer science, data science, or a closely related field
• Have strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Are able to work independently and take ownership of technical components
• Are interested in applying AI methods to real-world, high-stakes domains
• Are motivated to work with legal stakeholders from the Swiss judiciary
• Have experience with large language models, information retrieval, evaluation of ML systems, and deploying applications; this is highly desirable
• Have an excellent command of English; German language skills are a plus

Benefits

• Your job with impact: Become part of ETH Zurich, which not only supports your professional development, but also actively contributes to positive change in society
• You can expect numerous benefits, such as public transport season tickets and car sharing, a wide range of sports offered by the ASVZ, childcare and attractive pension benefits