SCHOOL OF AGRI-FOOD TECHNOLOGY & MANUFACTURING

Location: Lincoln
Salary: From £38,249 per annum
Please note, this post is fixed-term until 28 February 2026 and full-time at 1 FTE.
Closing Date: Wednesday 11 June 2025
Interview Date: To be confirmed
Reference: CHS188A
Are you a passionate roboticist eager to revolutionise autonomous mobile robot systems in real-world applications? Are you ready to take on a new and exciting challenge?
The School of Agri-Food Technology and Manufacturing (SAFTMan) at the University of Lincoln is seeking a dynamic Post-Doctoral Research Associate to join the TopFleets project. This role is ideal for individuals committed to developing high-quality, reusable software components to coordinate large-scale fleets of autonomous mobile robots. Situated within the UK’s largest agri-robotics cluster, this position offers a unique opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge research in agricultural automation.

WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR:

• A PhD or equivalent (candidates may be accepted with a PhD pending, subject to publication record) in a relevant field.
• Candidates may also be accepted with a Master degree in a relevant area onto a Research Assistant post. The job description for the Research Assistant post is available below.
• Proven expertise in software development, with a strong track record of working hands-on with physical robots.
• Proactive, well-organised, and innovative engineers who are excited to make robots work collaboratively in team settings.
• Proficiency in ROS2 and related technologies (e.g., DDS, MQTT for middleware; Docker for containerisation) is highly desirable.

Why Join Us? The role is based at the University of Lincoln’s Riseholme Campus, a facility uniquely equipped to support advanced agricultural robotics research. The campus offers:

• A state-of-the-art robotic fruit farm.
• A free shuttle service to the city centre.
• Dedicated robotics labs and a fully equipped engineering workshop.
• Infrastructure for cloud-based build and deploy systems, supporting git-based repositories and an actively maintained ROS distribution of hundreds of packages.

In this role, you’ll collaborate closely with a talented team of experts from the Lincoln Centre for Autonomous Systems (L-CAS). With numerous outdoor robotic platforms and exceptional facilities at your disposal, this is an unparalleled opportunity to advance your career in robotics research.
If you would like to know more about this exciting opportunity, please get in touch with Dr Gautham Das, Senior Lecturer in Agri-Robotics, at gdas@lincoln.ac.uk

ROLE HIGHLIGHTS:

• Focus on designing and implementing decentralised fleet coordination approaches for real-world deployment as part of the TopFleets project.
• Collaborate with world-leading researchers to develop, test, and deploy high-TRL (Technology Readiness Level) code.
• Enable the efficient, large-scale deployment of agricultural robotic fleets in diverse environments.

Why Join Us? The role is based at the University of Lincoln’s Riseholme Campus, a facility uniquely equipped to support advanced agricultural robotics research. The campus offers:

• A state-of-the-art robotic fruit farm.
• A free shuttle service to the city centre.
• Dedicated robotics labs and a fully equipped engineering workshop.
• Infrastructure for cloud-based build and deploy systems, supporting git-based repositories and an actively maintained ROS distribution of hundreds of packages