Vacancy sources for researchers
Find out about sites that can be useful starting points when looking for jobs as a researcher.
Academic jobs
Many academic jobs are advertised on individual university websites. Braintrack has links to universities around the world.
The two main sites for finding academic jobs within the UK are jobs.ac.uk and the Times Higher Education Supplement. These sites also advertise non-academic jobs within universities, and some international and commercial positions.
Other places to look for academic jobs:
- Euraxess Researchers in Motion - career opportunities for researchers across the EU, including vacancies, Fellowship and grant opportunities and links to career resources
- Academic jobs EU - database of academic and research jobs within the EU
- Career.edu - international jobs board for universities and government research organisations
- Computeroxy.com - academic and post-doctoral vacancies worldwide in engineering, mathematics and computer science
- Engineeroxy.com - academic and post-doctoral vacancies worldwide in engineering and technology
- Higher Ed jobs - US but has international vacancies
- FindaPostdoc - worldwide database of postdoctoral and research jobs
- US Chronicle of Higher Education - US equivalent of the Times Higher Education Supplement
- NatureJobs and Science Careers - academic research positions within science
- National Postdoctoral Association - resources for postdocs wanting to work in the United States
- AKADEUS - academic management and faculty jobs in the sector of business schools, higher education teaching and research business career opportunities worldwide
Funding
- Research Professional - site which allows you to search for all sorts of funding, whether for full grants or funding for a field trip
- University of Strathclyde - has a list of research councils and other organisations offering funding and academic vacancies
- Directory of smaller funding opportunities - provided by Queen Mary Careers Service
- Vitae - has information on research funding, including useful lists of international funding source
Non-academic research and research-related jobs
There is no one place to look for research jobs outside of academia. The following sources are useful starting points. You should also check out the discipline-specific pages for links to vacancies within your research area.
- Applied Industrial Research Trading Organisations - has a directory of industrial research organisations
- UK Science Park Associations
- ResearchGate - searchable database of scientific and research jobs
- The Engineer Online
- New Scientist
- Civil Service Jobs - the Civil Service has graduate level, PhD level and experienced hire jobs within research, administration, policy and scientific/engineering/technical roles. Sign-up facility for job alerts. You may also be interested in the Civil Service FastStream.
- Guardian jobs - nationally-advertised jobs in a wide range of areas, especially the public sector. Very useful for those interested in research outside a university environment. Also contains useful snippets of careers advice.
- HEFCE - another recruiter of people with research/HE experience
- MyFuture - Bath Careers Service in-house system includes vacancies for graduates, PhDs and postdocs. A limited number of research positions are advertised in the sections 'For PhD students' and for 'For Postdoctoral researchers'.
- TopCareer.Jobs - the combined vacancy site for positions with the Research Councils. The research councils are large organisations and often need people with research/HE experience to oversee strategy and grants processing. Take a look - you might like 'life on the other side'.
- Research Job Finder - jobs in market research
- The Market Research Society
- Charity Job
- ThirdSectorJobs
- Policy Library - has job postings, information about policy areas and a World Directory of Think Tanks
- The University of Sussex careers service - advertises a good range of jobs in research, policy and international development
It is also a good idea to make use of creative job-searching strategies to find opportunities with research organisations. Talk to your supervisor and other academics in your department, as they may have useful contacts. Consult the professional association or body that relates to your area of research - they often have lists of research organisations, and they also make available the career stories of people already working in research.
You can also use LinkedIn to help you find organisations and the biographies of people working in them - see these videos for advice on using LinkedIn for researching people and organisations.
Graduate jobs/graduate schemes
As a PhD student/post-doctoral researcher you can apply for one of the many graduate jobs or graduate schemes (one or two year structured training programmes with the larger graduate recruiters).
Graduate jobs exist with both larger companies and Small to Medium-Sized Enterprises.
Graduate schemes and Graduate jobs are advertised on the Career Service's MyFuture database, and also on graduate job sites such as Prospects, TargetJobs and Milkround.
Staying local
Researchers often want to find jobs in the South West or in other specific regions. Creative job searching is vital if you are limited to particular geographic areas, see the Finding a graduate job guide for details. See also the Jobhunting by UK region section of the Careers Service website.
Recruitment agencies
Specialist recruitment agencies can be good sources of vacancies in certain disciplines. See AgencyCentral for a directory of recruitment agencies. The University of Kent Careers Service provides lists of specialist recruitment agencies in science and engineering.