Student Assistant (HiWi) in Agentic Game Development

The Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems institute spans two campuses in Stuttgart and Tübingen, working together toward a common goal: advancing the frontiers of artificial intelligence and robotics. By combining their expertise, they explore the fundamental principles of intelligent systems from multiple perspectives. Research at their Tübingen site focuses on theoretical and computational aspects of intelligent systems, covering topics such as machine learning, computer vision, control, and societal aspects of artificial intelligence.

The Perceiving Systems Department at the institute’s Tübingen site is looking for a Student Assistant (HiWi) m/f/div in Agentic Game Development, starting as soon as possible.

About the project

Are you interested in building an agentic platform for generating branded playable experiences: short, interactive, game-like experiences that can be created, adapted, and deployed for different concepts, campaigns, and audiences? The project combines large language models, agentic orchestration, web/game development, creative generation, brand constraints, and interactive user experience design.

Roles and responsibilities

They are looking for a talented student who is pursuing a Master’s degree in Machine Learning, Computational Linguistics, Computer Science or adjacent programs. The candidate will contribute to the following:

• Designing and implementing an agentic workflow that can transform concepts and creative constraints into playable experiences.
• Building systems that generate interactive mini-games, including assets, game mechanics, and web-based playable prototypes.
• Developing LLM-based planning, reasoning, evaluation, and refinement loops for game generation.
• Creating tools for automatically producing, testing, and iterating game logic, visual layouts, scoring systems, and reward mechanics.
• Integrating frontend, backend, and AI components into an end-to-end working pipeline.
• Designing safeguards so that generated content follows safety guidelines, technical constraints, and platform-specific requirements.
• Documenting software architecture, implementation decisions, and technical specifications.

Education and experience

Applicants should have:

• A completed Bachelor’s degree in computer science, machine learning, artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, natural language processing, software engineering, data science, physics, mathematics, or a closely related technical field.
• Strong programming experience, preferably in Python and modern web development (HTML/JavaScript/CSS).
• Strong system-level thinking, including the ability to design modular pipelines, evaluate trade-offs, and build maintainable technical infrastructure.
• Experience building prototypes, research code, production software, developer tools, or AI-powered applications.
• Ability to work independently with ambiguous project and technical requirements.
• Good oral and written communication skills in English.

They prefer candidates with prior experience in game development, game engines, web development, LLM agents, tool use, recommender systems and generative AI. Please highlight relevant experience in your cover letter. Candidates who are not currently enrolled in a Master’s program but have an exceptional and highly relevant background may also be considered. Please explain this in your cover letter.

The offer

The student assistant position will allow you to:

• Gain valuable hands-on experience with agentic game development.
• Work closely with an international research group.
• Interact closely with PhD students and postdoctoral researchers.
• Use Claude Code Max for development
• Project duration is 6 months

Student assistants without a Bachelor’s degree will be paid €15.00 per hour. Student assistants with a Bachelor’s degree will be paid €15.61 per hour. Working time is up to 20 hours per week.

Application

Applications should include the following documents (in English):

• Cover letter (maximum two pages), describing the applicant’s academic background and research interests.
• Curriculum vitae, including a summary of education, research experience, relevant skills, and (if applicable) publications or software contributions.
• Transcript(s) of records from current and previous degree programs.
• Relevant website or GitHub links to past projects.

Please send the requested documents in a single PDF file, via the application portal. The posting is open until filled.For further information about the position, please contact Dr. Shashank Tripathi at stripathi@tue.mpg.de

The Max Planck Society is committed to increasing the number of individuals with disabilities in its workforce and therefore encourages applications from such qualified individuals. The Max Planck Society strives for gender equality and diversity. Furthermore, the Max Planck Society seeks to increase the number of women in its workforce in those areas where they are underrepresented and therefore explicitly encourages women to apply.