PhD Position Decentralized and Trustworthy AI Pipelines (EU project WALTZ)

PhD Position Decentralized and Trustworthy AI Pipelines (EU project WALTZ) Public administrations hold the data for better public services but cannot pool it. We aim to build decentralized AI pipelines that let them learn from data they can never expose, in the EU project WALTZ.

The Horizon Europe Innovation Action WALTZ (Workflow-Driven AI-Enabled Lawful and Trusted Data Spaces for Public Authorities) builds a trusted "system-of-systems" data stack that turns heterogeneous administrative data into governed, AI-ready assets, validated in six public-sector pilots. TU Delft leads its task on AI-ready training and evaluation pipelines using real and synthetic data. Public authorities cannot ship their data to a central trainer, the participants in such a pipeline cannot all be assumed honest, and the models they increasingly want to deploy are LLM-based, whose failures are semantic rather than crashes. We aim to build training and inference pipelines that work across administrative boundaries, and evaluation methods that say something honest about how far they can be trusted. Initial concrete task ideas include: design decentralized and federated pipelines that combine real and synthetic data across organisational boundaries without a central aggregator, under controlled mixing strategies that address data scarcity and distribution shift; make them resilient to Byzantine participants, and to poisoning of the synthetic data supply; quantify what leaks: membership inference and reconstruction against models trained on real-synthetic mixes, and the utility cost of differentially private generation; treat LLM-based components as a distributed system: replicate inference across diverse models, study how their failures correlate, and use quorum and semantic-agreement mechanisms to turn individually unreliable answers into trustworthy ones; build the evaluation side: benchmarks, cross-validation schemes, reporting protocols — covering accuracy, robustness, bias, generalisation and privacy leakage, released as open, reproducible software. You will be based at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS), in the Distributed Systems group of the Department of Software Technology, supervised by Dr Jérémie Decouchant, whose work spans Byzantine fault tolerance, decentralized learning and trustworthy AI systems. TU Delft's DelftBlue and DAIC GPU clusters are available for large-scale experiments. WALTZ has more than thirty partners, so your work will not stay in the lab: you will collaborate with research groups across Europe and see your methods stress-tested by real public authorities. Alongside your research you will publish at top venues, follow the TU Delft Graduate School doctoral programme, and take on a modest teaching and supervision load (up to 15%).

An MSc (completed, or close to completion) in Computer Science, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Electrical Engineering or a closely related field. A solid foundation in machine learning and/or distributed systems. Familiarity with federated or decentralized learning, fault tolerance, generative models, privacy-preserving ML, or LLM-based systems is a strong asset. Strong programming skills in Python and hands-on experience with a modern deep learning framework (e.g. PyTorch), including work on Linux-based GPU/HPC clusters. Demonstrable interest in trustworthy AI: privacy, robustness, adversarial behaviour, evaluation methodology and reproducibility. Strong analytical skills and the independence to carry a research agenda over four years, combined with the discipline to meet project deliverable deadlines. Excellent command of written and spoken English. Non-native speakers without an English-taught degree must meet the TU Delft English language requirements (e.g. TOEFL iBT 90 or IELTS 6.5 overall). A collaborative attitude: you enjoy working in a large international consortium and can explain your work to non-academic stakeholders such as public administrations. Commitment to open science: publishing code and benchmarks, and contributing to open-source software.

Doctoral candidates will be offered a 4-year period of employment in principle, but in the form of 2 employment contracts. An initial 1,5 year contract with an official go/no go progress assessment within 15 months. Followed by an additional contract for the remaining 2,5 years assuming everything goes well and performance requirements are met. Salary and benefits are in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities, increasing from €3204 - €4051 gross per month, from the first year to the fourth year based on a fulltime contract (38 hours), plus 8% holiday allowance and an end-of-year bonus of 8.3%. As a PhD candidate you will be enrolled in the TU Delft Graduate School. The TU Delft Graduate School provides an inspiring research environment with an excellent team of supervisors, academic staff and a mentor. The Doctoral Education Programme is aimed at developing your transferable, discipline-related and research skills. The TU Delft offers a customisable compensation package, discounts on health insurance, and a monthly work costs contribution. Flexible work schedules can be arranged. Will you need to relocate to the Netherlands for this job? TU Delft is committed to make your move as smooth as possible! The HR unit, Coming to Delft Service , offers information on their website to help you prepare your relocation. In addition, Coming to Delft Service organises events to help you settle in the Netherlands, and expand your (social) network in Delft. A Dual Career Programme is available, to support your accompanying partner with their job search in the Netherlands.

Delft University of Technology is built on strong foundations. As creators of the world-famous Dutch waterworks and pioneers in biotech, TU Delft is a top international university combining science, engineering and design. It delivers world class results in education, research and innovation to address challenges in the areas of energy, climate, mobility, health and digital society. For generations, our engineers have proven to be entrepreneurial problem-solvers, both in business and in a social context. At TU Delft we embrace diversity as one of our core values and we actively engage to be a university where you feel at home and can flourish. We value different perspectives and qualities. We believe this makes our work more innovative, the TU Delft community more vibrant and the world more just. Together, we imagine, invent and create solutions using technology to have a positive impact on a global scale. That is why we invite you to apply. Your application will receive fair consideration. Challenge. Change. Impact!

The Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS) brings together three scientific disciplines. Combined, they reinforce each other and are the driving force behind the technology we all use in our daily lives. Technology such as the electricity grid, which our faculty is helping to make completely sustainable and future-proof. At the same time, we are developing the chips and sensors of the future, whilst also setting the foundations for the software technologies to run on this new generation of equipment – which of course includes AI. Meanwhile we are pushing the limits of applied mathematics, for example mapping out disease processes using single cell data, and using mathematics to simulate gigantic ash plumes after a volcanic eruption. In other words: there is plenty of room at the faculty for ground-breaking research. We educate innovative engineers and have excellent labs and facilities that underline our strong international position. In total, more than 1000 employees and 4,000 students work and study in this innovative environment. Click here to go to the website of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science.