Power Systems Engineer for Cooling Singapore

100%, Singapore, temporary

The Singapore-ETH Centre (SEC) was established as a joint initiative between ETH Zurich – the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and Singapore’s National Research Foundation (NRF), as part of the NRF’s CREATE campus. The centre serves as an intellectual hub for research, scholarship, entrepreneurship, postgraduate and postdoctoral training. It is home to a community of over 100 PhD, postdoctoral and Professorial researchers working on diverse themes related to sustainable cities and resilient infrastructure systems. In the course of their work, researchers actively collaborate with universities, research institutes, industry, and government agencies with the aim of offering practical solutions.

Project background

SEC is leading the interdisciplinary Cooling Singapore 2.0 project – a collaboration between ETH Zurich, SMU, TUM, MIT, Cambridge and NUS. The project is dedicated to reducing the urban heat island and improving the outdoor thermal comfort in Singapore. The project aims to develop a Digital Urban Climate Twin (DUCT) for Singapore. This includes development, deployment and operations of the necessary technical infrastructure (e.g., simulation-as-a-service middleware) and integration of a variety of computational models for anthropogenic heat emissions and urban climate simulations. The DUCT will feature a sophisticated user interface and multiple applications to support government agencies and planning authorities in assessing strategies for reducing urban heat in a holistic, systematic and interactive manner.

Job description

Starting in January 2020 or under agreement, we are looking for a talented individual to join our interdisciplinary team based at the Singapore ETH-Centre in Singapore. We are lookingfor candidates who are interested in working in a multi-disciplinary and international research environment with flat hierarchies and a start-up vibe; who are driven by curiosity and not afraid of learning new things. Salary: We offer a competitive salary commensurate with skills and expertise, Basic health insurance coverage, and 25 days of annual leave. Duration: Contract (max 3 years), full-time position.

Your key responsibilities:

• Model and simulate the impact of future scenarios of supply mix and end-use demand on the anthropogenic heat emissions of power plants in Singapore.


• Identify the optimal energy system scenarios that mitigate the urban heat island effect and improve the outdoor thermal comfort in Singapore.


• Develop optimization algorithms for the techno-economic evaluation of power systems in Singapore.


• Integration of these optimization algorithms into the Digital Urban Climate Twin Platform for cooling Singapore.


• Support on the development of surrogate models in collaboration with data scientists, transport engineers and building engineers.

Your profile

You should have a relevant degree master’s degree or PhD degree in electrical engineering and/or operations research. You are expected to bring in:

• Strong skills in MILP and other optimization algorithms.


• Experience in energy systems planning.


• Experience working with machine learning frameworks in python (and knowledge of gradient boosting trees and deep learning) architectures is a plus.


• Experience in the development of working software is a plus.


• Excellent and proven coding skills in python and any other object-oriented programming language.


• Experience working in interdisciplinary teams.


• Excellent presentation and communication skills.


• Competency to execute excellent independent work.


• Fluency in English both spoken and written.

Singapore-ETH Centre

The Singapore-ETH Centre provides a multicultural and interdisciplinary environment to researchers working on diverse themes focussed on sustainable and liveable cities, resilient urban systems, and patient-centric healthcare. The centre is home to a community of over 100 doctoral, postdoctoral and professorial researchers working in three main programmes: Future Cities Laboratory, Future Resilient Systems, and Future Health Technologies. Working, teaching and research at Singapore-ETH Centre