Senior Researcher

Grade UE08: £50,253 to £61,759 per annum

CSE / School of Informatics    

Full time: 35 hours per week (part-time working can also be considered)

Fixed-term: 12 months

Vacancies: 1

The Opportunity:

The School of Informatics is seeking a Senior Researcher to be employed to work within the Effect Handler Oriented Programming (EHOP) project. The focus will be on the continuing design, implementation, and evaluation of the WasmFX extension to WebAssembly. There will also be opportunities to engage with other aspects of the EHOP project.

WebAssembly (abbreviated Wasm) is a portable low-level bytecode, supported by all major web browsers. WasmFX is an extension of Wasm with effect handlers developed as part of the EHOP project. It provides a uniform target for empowering programming language implementers to directly support a range of first-class control features such as async/await, lightweight threads, and generators.

WasmFX has a full formal specification. It is in the process of standardisation by the WebAssembly Community Group (the de facto standardisation committee for WebAssembly). There are implementations in the official reference interpreter as well as the Wizard and Wasmtime runtimes. Development is also underway of an implementation in the Chrome web browser.

The post holder will be primarily responsible for systematically evaluating the effectiveness of WasmFX using Wasm engines with support for WasmFX (including Wizard and Wasmtime) as well as developing and evaluating backends for research and industrial-strength programming languages (including C, Kotlin, Links, and OCaml), by designing and carrying out appropriate benchmarks. They will work closely with the developers of these engines and languages, and this research will inform the future design of Wasm engines and WasmFX backends as well as the official Wasm standard.

Your skills and attributes for success:

• PhD in Computer Science or related field
• Strong background in the theory of programming language including formal type systems and semantics.
• Significant experience with the implementation of programming languages and their pragmatic design considerations.
• Experience with the practice of software benchmarking and optimization, and in the implementation and delivery of applied software systems, for example in an industrial or research context.
• Several years of experience building production software systems, including in industrial contexts.

Click to view a copy of the full job description  (opens new browser tab) 

Application Information

Please ensure you include the following documents in your application:

• CV
• Cover letter

Contact details for enquiries Sam Lindley via Sam.Lindley@ed.ac.uk

Feedback is only provided to interviewed candidates.

As a valued member of our team you can expect: 

• A competitive salary
• An exciting, positive, creative, challenging and rewarding place to work. 
• To be part of a diverse and vibrant international community
• Comprehensive Staff Benefits, such as a generous holiday entitlement, competitive pension schemes, staff discounts, and family-friendly initiatives. Check out the full list on our staff benefits page (opens in a new tab) and use our reward calculator to discover the total value of your pay and benefits 

Championing equality, diversity and inclusion

The University of Edinburgh holds a Silver Athena SWAN award in recognition of our commitment to advance gender equality in higher education. We are members of the Race Equality Charter and we are also Stonewall Scotland Diversity Champions, actively promoting LGBT equality. 

Prior to any employment commencing with the University you will be required to evidence your right to work in the UK. Further information is available on our right to work webpages (opens new browser tab)

The University may be able to sponsor the employment of international workers in this role.  This will depend on a number of factors specific to the successful applicant.
 

Key dates to note

The closing date for applications is 23rd October 2025.
 

Unless stated otherwise the closing time for applications is 11:59pm GMT. If you are applying outside the UK the closing time on our adverts automatically adjusts to your browsers local time zone. 

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