Research Associate/PhD Candidate in Building and Scaling Agentic AI in Organizations (m/f/d) - #52113

Research Associate/PhD Candidate in Building and Scaling Agentic AI in Organizations (m/f/d)

100 % (limited term; starting immediately or by agreement, for about 3.5 years (duration of the PhD programme))

Your tasks

Are you fascinated by AI systems that not only respond to inputs but act autonomously? Would you like to design agentic AI that aligns with organizational frameworks and scales from individual applications to enterprise-wide architectures? Do you view orchestration and governance as core design challenges for enterprise agentic AI? If so, we'd love to have you on our team.
In our research, we design, build, and evaluate agentic AI systems with and inside partner organizations, moving from individual agent-based solutions to enterprise-wide agentic architectures. In your role you build the systems our research is grounded in.

Your tasks

• Develop agentic AI solutions for organizational use cases together with our industry partners.
• Scale these solutions to multi-agent systems, cross-departmental workflows, and platform-spanning architectures, integrating them into enterprise systems while addressing questions around decentralized structures and control mechanisms.
• Implement governance aspects in practice, including roles, permissions, and oversight mechanisms
• Experimentally evaluate your prototypes in real organizational settings and refine findings into generalizable design knowledge, supported by close collaboration with your supervisors
• Publish your research in top journals and present at leading conferences
• Contribute to innovative teaching and executive education formats, presenting your systems to decision-makers in corporations, SMEs, and international research institutions

We offer

• A work environment tailored to your strengths: you focus on building and evaluating systems, with conceptual and theoretical development supported by your supervisors, following the design-oriented research tradition of our institute
• A structured PhD timeline (approx. 3.5 years) with intensive hands-on supervision
• Entrepreneurial environment with access to real organizational data, systems, and deployment contexts through our industry partners
• High degree of freedom to shape the newly founded Center for Digital Enterprise Transformation (CDET) on AI and Cloud Transformation topics
• Participation in leading international conferences and access to an excellent research network
• Modern tools, infrastructure, and substantial autonomy in your work
• Attractive working conditions, including flexibility and a competitive salary
• Support for your post-PhD career in academia or industry

Your profile

• Excellent master's degree with a grade point average of at least 5.0 (min. 2.0 in Germany/Austria or equivalent) in (Business) Informatics, (Business) Engineering, Data Science, or Business Administration with technical depth
• Strong software engineering skills: fluent in Python, write production-quality code, and are comforable with Git, APIs, containerization (e.g., Docker), and cloud environments
• Experience with building LLM-based and agentic systems, e.g. with agent frameworks and SDKs (LangChain/LangGraph, OpenAI Agents SDK, Claude Agent SDK), tool use and function calling, RAG pipelines and interoperability protocols (MCP, A2A)
• Solid understanding of organisational contexts: business processes, organisational structures, and IT investment economics. Comfortable discussing architecture with engineers and value/risk with department heads
• Interest in agentic AI: Who is accountable when agents act, how permissions and oversight are designed across departments and platforms, and what it takes to move from pilot to scaled, governed deployment
• Curiosity and ambition to contribute to research through your systems; prior experience in academic writing is a plus
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English and German.

The Institute of Information Systems and Digital Business (IWI-HSG) has been conducting application- and design-oriented research at the interface between business and IT for more than 30 years. Within the institute, the research group of Prof. Dr. Jan Marco Leimeister investigates how digital technologies transform service delivery, work, and organizations and a focus on the Management of Agentic AI and GenAI in Organizations We are looking forward to your online-application stating the job ID 2780 apply here

Inspirational Work Environment

Executive Education

Network

Family & Career

Equal Opportunities

Fit and Healthy

Further information on working at the HSG can be found here.

For job-related questions

Prof. Dr. Jan Marco Leimeister
Full Professor of Information Management

Join a research group where rigorous Information Systems research meets real organizational impact.

Dr. Mahei Li
Project Manager
[email protected]

We are looking for someone who loves building, experimenting and conceptualizing. Together we turn them into insightful and impactful research.

Your place of work

University of St.Gallen

«A place where knowledge is created» - As one of Europe's leading universities of economics and business administration, the University of St.Gallen (HSG), Switzerland, is committed to the education of over 10'000 students. The HSG is one of the largest employers in the region and provides an attractive and innovative environment for more than 3'500 researchers, educators and professional staff

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