European Academic Career Opportunities in 2025

Over the last few weeks, I have been contacted by many of my junior colleagues in the US about current and upcoming opportunities to start an academic career in Europe rather than in the uncertain environment the US has become.  So here is my general advice. I'll try to update this regularly. 

Target audience: Finishing PhD students, Postdocs, Junior faculty (not-yet-tenured)

Postdoc in Europe

There are a number of ways of finding a postdoc, with or without funding.  Here are various tips I usually give when I am asked: 

• Contact directly the labs or profs that you know, or who are connected to your work. You could suggest a visit or a talk at their seminar, or just spontaneously "apply" and ask if there is funding available, or if you could apply to a specific grant together. Labs will know better what are the opportunities in their country or locally at their university for postdocs. Indeed, you may not always get a response... in this case you can try to:

• Apply for grants or research prizes, such as the Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellowship (European, you can choose a host lab in all participating countries), or the national follwoships: 

  • Germany: Humboldt 

  • Switzerland: SNSF Postdoctoral fellowship

  • France: in AI, the PRAIRIE institute has a bunch of opportunities. The first strategy above works better in France, and as explained below there are a lot of tenured early-career positions in France that you can apply to directly after PhD, or after a short post-doc. 

For some of these grant applications, you will need to find a lab that wants to host you. But it is usually easier to start the discussion by saying that you are willing to do the extra work of finding your own money for the project. Also, getting such a grant will be a very important line in your CV for the next steps in your career. 

Junior Faculty positions in Europe

Germany.  I am currently a "Group Leader" in Tübingen, Germany since 2023, so I am becoming to have a good idea of how German academia works, and its pros and cons. 

• Pros: Protected and valued academia, high salary, excellent funding situation for AI-related research

• Cons: Overall lack of transparency of the tenure process (get a good mentor!), high bureaucratic complexity (make sure you have good support!), everything is highly negotiable (is it a Pro?)

Here is a general guide for academic careers in Germany (in English)

I can think of a few opportunities. First, depending on your time constraints, I think the best idea would be for you to submit an Emmy Noether proposal:

https://www.dfg.de/en/news/news-topics/announcements-proposals/2025/ifr-25-16

(The call is not open yet, but should open this summer or so. I am an Emmy Noether independent Group Leader, do reach out to me directly if you need advice or help about the Emmy Noether proposal process)

Essentially, Emmy Noether is a big package (~1.5M EUR) to start your independent group so no teaching duty until you become a professor. It gives you the time to discover and learn about German academia and where you'd like to be. I've been a group leader for 2,5 years and it's really a fantastic way to start an independent academic career without all the "duties" of a professor. Then, this is such a prestigious award that you will have no issues finding a tenured job.

The Technical University of Nuremberg is a newly founded AI University in Nuremberg and it will have dozens of positions opening in the next 10 years. Currently there are 2 openings: 

https://www.utn.de/en/career/professorships/

In fact, many universities in Germany are hiring in our field and I believe this will continue for a while. 

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France. I am French and I did my PhD in France, but I have not worked as an academic in France. 

• Pros: High-level of research in AI for a long time, excellent students in mathematics, great and well-funded research institutes (INRIA, CNRS), active and booming AI scene, especially in Paris, many positions opening every year 

• Cons: Low salaries overall (tough it is compensated by other benefits to some extents), French language mandatory in some institutions (in particular Universities, not CNRS or INRIA).

An important thing to understand about French academia is that the early-career (tenured) positions come with essentially no additional funding for students at first. You start as a Junior member of a team, you are essentially a tenured postdoc until you apply for grants and get your bigger projects going, if you wish to do so. It is not equivalent to an Assistant Prof position in the US, it comes with way less stress (you are tenured) but also less money. But you can apply either at the end of your PhD, especially if you have published well and/or been abroad, or after a short postdoc. 

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ELLIS units and ELLIS Institutes. 

The ELLIS network founded in 2018 has grown into a successful and prestigious cluster of excellence opportunities for AI in Europe. The PhDs and Postdoc funding opportunities can be found on the main ELLIS website. Structurally, ELLIS is simply a non-profit structure coordinating  initiatives in all European countries, including a PhD program across institutions and a postdoc program. It centralizes informations and allows to raised funds for dedicated activites such as summer schools. For the past couple of years, local institutes have been funded and are opening positions at all levels.

There are currently 2 institutes (publicly and privately funded):

• ELLIS Institute Tuebingen: https://institute-tue.ellis.eu/

• ELLIS Finland: https://www.ellisinstitute.fi/

I am not aware of open calls at the moment but I would recommend to subscribe to the ELLIS newletter to get updated on opening opportunites (see bottom of ellis.eu)