The digitization of everyday life creates new opportunities for healthcare innovation. Building on more than 15 years of research in designing and evaluating digital therapeutics (DTx, software-based interventions for prevention, management, and treatment of disease), we started to work on novel DTx Design & Trial Services in 2025, supported by:

1. University Medicine Zurich technology initiative PRECIOUS, a Design and Trial Service for Precision DTx,
2. Swiss National Science Foundation project GRACE, A Voice Assistant for Improving the Quality of Life in People with Early Dementia,
3. Innosuisse flagship project Swiss Precision DTx for the Prevention of Type 2 Diabetes,
4. UZH Digital Society Initiative project Agentic Interview Service ELIAS, and the
5. Digital Health Zurich project REACT: Resource Activation for Teachers’ Well-being with Timely, Needs-Based Support.

Highlights include the 1st UMZH Precision DTx Summer School 2025 (40+ participants), as shown in this video feature. Here is a recent progress update from December 2025.

To strengthen our software engineering activities, we are hiring two Full Stack Engineers (80–100%) at the Institute for Implementation Science in Health Care, team Digital Health Interventions, University of Zurich, supervised by Prof. Dr. Tobias Kowatsch, with a focus on AI Agent Systems for Digital Therapeutics and Clinical Trials.

What you will do

In close collaboration with an interdisciplinary research team (medicine, technology, management, and law), and another software engineer, you will design, build, and operate software services for the development and evaluation of DTx, with a focus on LLM-based agentic health interventions.

Current systems and directions

Examples of services we are building and extending include (see this webinar for more details):

1. STELLA, a design and trial service for agentic text- and voice-based health interventions
2. GENIE, a precision media generation service (e.g. hyper-personalized health literacy podcasts)
3. Agentic ethics and regulatory assistant
4. Two-sided marketplace for DTx components
5. Agentic diagnostic interview services
6. Agentic coding for qualitative interview data
7. Agentic services for participant reimbursement
8. Prediction and prevention of non-adherence
9. Models to predict opportune moments for delivering support (right time, right context)

We offer

1. Fully-funded 2-year position (80% or 100%), starting as soon as possible
2. Meaningful work addressing real-world health challenges
3. Collaboration with digital health researchers
4. Hybrid work (flexible mix of on-site and remote)
5. Access to an international network in digital health

You have

1. Bachelor’s degree in computer science (or related field) or vocational education as a software engineer
2. At least 2 years of professional software development experience in a team
3. Strong JavaScript/TypeScript skills
4. Experience with web UI frameworks
5. Experience building secure systems
6. Familiarity with microservice architectures and event-driven systems
7. Strong communication skills in English or German

Nice to have

1. Docker and Kubernetes
2. Model Context Protocol (MCP)
3. LangGraph and/or LangChain
4. Python skills and experience with ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch or TensorFlow)
5. Experience operating and fine-tuning language models
6. Familiarity with web-based technologies (e.g., React)
7. Cloud-native architectures and deployments
8. Familiarity with Linux and the command line interface
9. Cryptographic methods
10. DevOps experience
11. Understanding of ethical/legal/regulatory aspects of medical software
12. Experience with AI-assisted developer tools to accelerate coding, testing, and documentation

How to apply

Send one PDF (motivation letter, CV, transcript of records, optional reference letters and projects) by 31 January 2026 to: Prof. Dr. Tobias Kowatsch tobias.kowatsch@uzh.ch.