Job Vacancy: Postdoctoral Researcher in Situational Awareness for Modern Code Review

The Software REBELs are seeking applications to fill a vacancy at the Postdoctoral Researcher level.

Position Overview

Job Type: Postdoctoral Researcher
Project: Situational Awareness for Modern Code Review
Targeted Start Date: September 1, 2021 (flexible)
Duration: 1–3 years

Project Details

While code review boasts technical and non-technical benefits, the process itself is largely manual. To provide useful feedback, reviewers must have an awareness of the context of the code being modified, e.g., how the code is currently structured, how it operates in production, and how it might impact other concurrent changes. While this situational awareness is crucial, code review interfaces are still primarily based on textual source code differencing. In this project, we will develop concepts, techniques, and tools to ease the cultivation of situational awareness among patch authors and reviewers.

The successful applicant will be co-supervised by Dr. Michael W. Godfrey and will closely collaborate with an industrial partner.

Job Requirements

Application Contents

To apply for the position, create an application package with the following contents:

Application Procedure

Combine the application package into a single PDF and submit it by email to Shane McIntosh [first_name].[family_name]@uwaterloo.ca. The email must use the subject: "Application for the Postdoctoral Researcher Vacancy in Situational Awareness for Modern Code Review".

Research Environment

The mission of the Software REBELs is to enable the development, maintenance, and operation of intelligent release pipelines. We do so by mining historical and operational development and build data. In addition, we leverage the rich data available within the build system to support various stakeholders on software development teams (e.g., developers, devops engineers, managers).

The Software REBELs are located at the University of Waterloo in the heart of one of Canada's fastest growing and most innovative cities. The Software REBELs are a part of the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science and are funded by generous support from the Faculty of Mathematics, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Mitacs, and our industrial partners at YourBase, Dell EMC, and Shopify to name a few.

Questions?

For more information, contact Shane McIntosh at [given_name].[family_name]@uwaterloo.ca.