We are looking for recent PhD graduates or postdocs who might be interested in a fully-paid research internship with the Education Research team at JetBrains Research. A successful internship may result in a permanent hire. 

Key Details:

• Focus: Research internship with the team working on software engineering education

• Ideal candidate profile: Candidates with experience in providing feedback, teaching programming to groups, or exploring AI use in upper-level courses

• Technical skills: Candidates should be able to write simple Python scripts for data processing

• Location: Europe-based
  
  

Software Engineering Simulation project:

The goal of this new project is to simulate a complete software engineering experience, mirroring the working conditions of a real company, to help participants improve not only their programming skills but also their system design proficiency.

Here is how the simulation platform works:

• Participants develop features for an existing codebase that includes reference implementations (used internally for evaluation but hidden from participants)

• Their work is assessed on aspects such as architecture, code quality, complexity, modularization, and overall engineering practices

• We aim to recreate a realistic developer workflow by integrating tools commonly used in modern development environments, such as GitHub, Slack, or YouTrack

Ultimately, this platform is designed to help people grow as engineers by practicing real-world system design and implementation tasks.

Internship scope:

In this internship, you will focus on the research part of the SE Simulation project. You will design and conduct studies related to interactions with the platform, such as:

• What feedback is most effective for learning system design skills?

• How should interactions be designed to support students’ growth?

• How can we evaluate the overall learning impact of the system?

We plan to start with smaller pilot studies, followed by collaborations with universities to run longer-term evaluations. You will be mentored by a team consisting of two other researchers, external collaborators, and the group lead. 

Note: This role does not involve developing the simulation platform itself.

After the internship you will:

• Gain valuable experience in industry research within the educational domain

• Learn how to apply research methods to large educational research projects

• Participate in the collaborative paper-writing process for a top-level conference

• Develop skills in managing and contributing to complex joint research projects

• Learn how to handle and process gathered data effectively, use tools to optimize your work, and achieve highly accurate results

• Have the opportunity to learn other programming languages and improve your understanding of system design as part of this project

• Enhance your collaboration and communication skills by working with a diverse, interdisciplinary team

• Build a solid foundation for future research or industry roles through hands-on experience in a cutting-edge project

An ideal candidate will have:

• Sincere interest in research and innovation (academia or industry)

• Experience in one of the following areas will be an advantage:

  • Programming automated feedback

  • Integrating GenAI into upper-level computing courses

  • Collaborative work on software engineering projects

• Understanding of common research methods, such as interviews, surveys, think-aloud studies, focus groups, etc.

• First-author publications in top educational conferences (e.g., SIGCSE, ICER, ITiCSE, ICSE SEET)

• Basic programming knowledge to write simple analytical scripts in Python for data processing. 

• Willingness to learn other programming languages if needed

• Fluent written and spoken English 

• Teaching experience is a plus