Energy Systems Engineer

80%-100%, Singapore, fixed-term

ETH Zurich is one of the leading universities of the world with a strong focus on science and engineering. In 2010 it established the Singapore-ETH Centre (SEC) in collaboration with the National Research Foundation (NRF) to do interdisciplinary research on pressing problems.

The Singapore-ETH Centre is home to a community of doctoral, postdoctoral and professorial researchers working in three main programmes: Future Cities Laboratory, Future Resilient Systems, and Future Health Technologies. The centre provides a multicultural and interdisciplinary environment to researchers working on diverse themes, with the shared vision of translating research to practical solutions for more sustainable and liveable cities, resilient physical and social urban systems, and patient-centric healthcare systems.

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 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

We are looking for a talented individual to join our interdisciplinary and international team based at the Singapore ETH-Centre in Singapore.

Your key responsibilities are:

• Model and simulate the impact of district energy systems (with a special focus on cooling technologies) to urban warming in Singapore.


• Identify the optimal energy system scenarios that mitigate Urban Heat Island and improve Outdoor thermal comfort in Singapore.


• Develop optimization algorithms for the techno-economic evaluation of energy system configuration.


• Integrate these optimization algorithms into the Digital Urban Climate Twin platform.


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

Your profile

• Master’s or PhD degree in Operations Research, Energy Systems, Process engineering, Civil engineering, Mechanical engineering or equivalent experience.


• Good command of scripting and data analysis languages (Python, Matlab, R).


• Experience in energy systems planning.


• Experience working with model-based energy and/or building systems design is a plus.


• Experience working with optimization frameworks is a plus.


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


• Experience working in interdisciplinary teams.


• Excellent presentation and communication skills.


• Competency to execute excellent independent work.


• Fluency in English (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