Research Associate in Edge and Cloud computing: Deployment and Resource Management

Salary: £35,116 to £40,497 per annum

Newcastle University is a great place to work, with excellent benefits. We have a generous holiday package; plus the opportunity to buy more, great pension schemes and a number of health and wellbeing initiatives to support you.

Closing Date: 26 March 2025

The Role

The National EdgeAI Hub is one of the nine UK hubs funded by UKRI’s AI for Real Data initiative, addressing key challenges in cybersecurity, data quality, and AI trustworthiness in edge computing environments. The hub includes collaborations with 12 UK universities and over 50 industrial partners, driving innovation in AI for real-world applications across healthcare, smart cities, energy, and autonomous transport. For more information about the hub’s mission and objectives, please visit here. 

This position will be responsible for developing and optimizing methodologies for cloud scheduling, resource orchestration, multi-objective optimization, and deployment in edge computing and cyber-physical systems (CPS). The role involves designing efficient scheduling algorithms, improving workload distribution strategies, and optimizing cloud-edge resource allocation to enhance system performance, and resilience. The successful candidate will bring expertise in distributed computing, and cloud-edge resource management, with a strong emphasis on developing scalable and secure deployment strategies. Additionally, the successful candidate will be expected to contribute to research publications, collaborate with industrial and academic partners, and support the broader objectives of the National EdgeAI Hub.

This project requires expertise in multi-objective optimization, cloud-edge resource orchestration, and secure deployment strategies for Edge computing applications, particularly in energy and transport sectors. A strong understanding of optimization techniques, edge computing, and workload balancing is essential to develop resilient and efficient cloud-edge frameworks for CPS. The research will contribute to advancing secure and adaptive scheduling mechanisms, optimizing computational resources, and facilitating the safe deployment of edge-based services in critical infrastructure.

As part of our commitment to career development for research colleagues, the University has developed 3 levels of research role profiles.  These profiles set out firstly the generic competences and responsibilities expected of role holders at each level and secondly the general qualifications and experiences needed for entry at a particular level.

This role is fixed term for 12 month and is part time at 18.5 hours per week (50% FTE).

Key Accountabilities

Cloud Scheduling & Resource Orchestration:

• Develop efficient cloud-edge scheduling mechanisms to optimize workload distribution.
• Design multi-objective optimization techniques to balance performance, latency, and cost in distributed environments.
• Implement secure and resilient resource orchestration strategies for cyber-physical systems.

Edge and cloud Deployment:

• Ensure secure deployment of edge computing systems, mitigating potential cyber threats.
• Develop strategies to minimize attack surfaces in cloud-edge infrastructure.
• Conduct risk assessments and compliance evaluations for cloud and edge deployments.

Optimization & Performance Enhancement:

• Apply optimization algorithms to enhance the scalability, efficiency, and performance of cloud-edge deployments.
• Develop methodologies to reduce latency and improve fault tolerance in cyber-physical systems.

Deployment & Integration:

• Design automated deployment pipelines for secure and scalable edge computing frameworks.
• Ensure seamless integration of resource-aware orchestration solutions into industrial and smart infrastructure environments.

The Person 

Knowledge, Skills and Experience 

• Strong knowledge of cloud-edge computing architectures, scheduling, and resource management
• Expertise in multi-objective optimization and distributed system orchestration
• Hands-on experience with contnerization, virtualization, and cloud-native deployment technologies (e.g., Kubernetes, Docker)
• Understanding of deployment principles in cloud-edge environments
• Proficiency in distributed computing frameworks (e.g., Apache Kafka, Spark, EdgeX Foundry)
• Experience in fault-tolerant and resilient system design
• Hands-on experience with infrastructure-as-code (IaC) tools such as Terraform or Ansible. 
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and edge computing frameworks.

Attributes and Behaviour

• Experience with real-time scheduling techniques for cyber-physical systems
• Knowledge of federated computing and distributed workload balancing
• Hands-on experience with resource risk assessment tools

Qualifications

• PhD in Computer Science, cloud engineering and monitoring, or a related field. Equivalent industry experience may be considered
• Professional certifications AWS, Azure or Google cloud Platform or other cloud providers
   

Newcastle University is a global University where everyone is treated with dignity and respect.  As a University of Sanctuary, we aim to provide a welcoming place of safety for all, offering opportunities to people fleeing violence and persecution.

We are committed to being a fully inclusive university which actively recruits, supports and retains colleagues from all sectors of society.  We value diversity as well as celebrate, support and thrive on the contributions of all of our employees and the communities they represent.  We are proud to be an equal opportunities employer and encourage applications from individuals who can complement our existing teams, we believe that success is built on having teams whose backgrounds and experiences reflect the diversity of our university and student population.

At Newcastle University we hold a silver  Athena Swan award in recognition of our good employment practices for the advancement of gender equality.  We also hold a Race Equality Charter Bronze award in recognition of our work towards tackling race inequality in higher education REC.  We are a Disability Confident employer and will offer an interview to disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for the role as part of the offer and interview scheme.

In addition, we are a member of the Euraxess initiative supporting researchers in Europe. 

Requisition ID: 27977