[Hiring] Researcher @VendueTech

Role Description

The opportunity involves research that moves beyond today's deep learning/RL paradigms toward genuinely trustworthy cognitive AI, focusing on:

• Causal reasoning, abstraction, and planning under uncertainty.
• Building and demonstrating a working system (TRL3/4).
• Defining new industry benchmarks for reasoning and trustworthiness.
• Joining a wider EU-funded portfolio shaping how cognitive AI gets built and regulated across Europe.

Specific opportunities include:

• Visibility at the frontier: work that gets cited, invites to speak, and recognition by labs and industry.
• A funded system, not a thought experiment: successful awards mean building and demonstrating the actual architecture.
• Named contributor on a flagship EU AI initiative tied to benchmark development and portfolio activities.
• A credential that compounds: EIC Pathfinder co-authorship is a strong signal on any postdoc, faculty, or industry research application.

What you'd do:

• Co-develop the scientific narrative and technical approach for a 30-page Pathfinder proposal.
• Bring rigor on reasoning/abstraction/planning methodology, related work, and evaluation design.
• Work directly with our founding team through submission.

Qualifications

• Research background in neuro-symbolic AI, causal inference, cognitive architectures, or deep RL/planning.
• Track record: publications at NeurIPS/ICML/ICLR/AAAI or equivalent, PhD in progress or completed.
• Based at or affiliated with a top research institution (ETH Zurich, Imperial College, EPFL, Oxford, TU Munich, etc.). EU/associated-country affiliation strongly preferred.
• Comfortable working fast, iteratively, with a startup team, not academic-committee pace.