CLOSED: 1 to 2 year research engineer position on efficient privacy-preserving network analysis for cyber defense in space

CONTEXT

This project is part of the novel CyberGalaxia project, part of CyberExcellence, and funded by the FEDER European fund.

This one to two-year contract (to be discussed) will take place at Galaxia, location of many companies active in cybersecurity and space, such as Rhea, Telespazio and, of course near the ESA and the Euro Space Center. The researcher will have the opportunity to train on two demonstrators, including a cyber range.

While this contract is limited and, therefore, too short to conduct a PhD, it is possible to look for further funding to conduct a PhD (typically four years in Belgium) with the ENSG. Applying as a post-doc is also possible. The salary will be matched with UCLouvain’s salary scale.

ORGANISATION/COMPANY

Université catholique de Louvain

Institute of Information and Communication Technologies, Electronics and Applied Mathematics (ICTEAM)

RESEARCH FIELD

Networking, Systems, NFV, CyberSecurity

MINIMUM REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

The candidate must have obtained a Master’s degree in computer science before the start date (April 2024, can be adapted). If applying as a post-doc, the same rule applies to the doctoral dissertation.

APPLICATION DEADLINE

ASAP, applications will be reviewed every two weeks until a candidate is found.

LOCATION

The applicant will share his or her time between Galaxia in Transinnes which is where the contact will be established, and a second office in Louvain-La-Neuve. The split of her/his time is to be discussed. Given that access to Galaxia is limited with public transport, the applicant should have their own car.

TYPE OF CONTRACT

Research Engineer, 1 to 2 year position, full-time

Funded as part of the CyberGalaxia FEDER project.

JOB STATUS

Full-time

HOURS PER WEEK

38

OFFER DESCRIPTION

The applicant will join the ENSG, but work partly at Galaxia in Transinnes with other members of CyberGalaxia.

The candidate will build a network audit system to allow auditors to run analyses on network traffic without violating user privacy or regulations such as the GDPR. To this end, the candidate will build a verifier that ensures that the private data of users analyzed by the audit system are aggregated in a sufficient manner before being exported to the listener. For instance, the program can scan each connection to check the recipient’s secure server name (TLS SNI) but can only output a proportion of users heading to the servers of this or that service provider. The system will be based on Retina, a system previously built in a consortium including the ENSG and Stanford ESRG.

SKILLS/QUALIFICATION

  • Successful student
  • Good in the Operating System, computer systems/architecture and networking courses
  • Knowledge of programming in Rust is a plus, else comfortable with low level languages like C
  • Autonomy, research-minded

SUBMISSION

Please send to tom.barbette@uclouvain.be:

(a) Curriculum vitae;

(b) Motivation letter;

(c) Transcript of grades for freshly graduated/graduating students

We will get back to you, the selection process includes in general a first informal meeting via Teams, and then an in-person interview.

REQUIRED LANGUAGES

ENGLISH: at least B1

French is not required but is a plus

Other positions

See the range of possibilities at the Efficiency of Networked Systems Group