Institutional Scientific Employment

FCT-Tenure Program

Program of the Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P. to support the hiring of PhD researchers exclusively for permanent positions.

The FCT-Tenure program is a new FCT funding instrument designed to promote the hiring of PhDs exclusively for permanent positions. The FCT-Tenure program is intended to be held every two years, serving as a key instrument both in stabilizing the professional lives of researchers and their lines of research, and in creating a more attractive and sustainable career path for researchers in the early stages of their careers.

Institutions belonging to the National Science and Technology System (SNCT) are eligible to apply, allowing them to submit applications for support for Calls for career positions. It will then be up to the beneficiary institutions to select and recruit the PhD graduates to be hired through Calls , in accordance with the scientific and innovation strategy submitted for evaluation.

The program is implemented on a co-financing basis and will allow PhD graduates to pursue careers in both research and teaching, with a limit of four hours per week dedicated to teaching in each career while the support is in effect. In this way, both careers are viewed through the scientific research activities they have in common and, at the same time, an important level of autonomy is provided in the management of career positions within the framework of each institution's strategic planning.

The duration of this co-financing will be up to a maximum of 3 years for each position assigned in the teaching career and up to a maximum of 6 years for each position assigned in the research career, corresponding to two-thirds of the salary costs of each position in the first 3 years for both careers, and one-third in the second three-year period in the case of hiring within the research career or equivalent.

Co-financing will apply to the salary costs of any category in which the researcher is hired, enabling each researcher to be hired in the category that best suits their profile and career path (researcher/assistant or adjunct professor, researcher/coordinating professor/full professor).

Expenses related to doctoral degrees will not be eligible for this support if the doctoral candidates already have permanent employment contracts in scientific research, university teaching, or polytechnic higher education teaching, and without a fixed term in national institutions not covered by the Career Statutes. In addition, only PhDs who have benefited from a fixed-term contract or Studentship, as a PhD, at an institution of the National Science and Technology System will be eligible for this support.

With the aim of promoting financial and strategic synergies between the FCT-Tenure program and other institutions, applicants may propose additional co-financing solutions and/or the sharing of responsibilities and scientific objectives with third parties. In such cases, each position proposed for evaluation may be flagged and subsequently advertised as a "Research Associate Laboratory RU/AL)" Chair or a "Non-Academic (NA)" Chair.

The design of this program shares the general guidelines that shape new programs already launched by FCT, namely the promotion of greater mobility and flexibility in research, understood as interinstitutional, intersectoral, and intercareer (research and teaching), but also interdisciplinary and collaborative. This values bottom-up approaches and dynamics which, by rejecting one-size-fits-all solutions, allow the scientific community and institutions to more readily adapt to and take advantage of the diversity and creativity of disciplinary contexts and knowledge production structures, which are increasingly diverse and collaborative.

The first edition of this program plans to open up to 1,000 positions, with an additional 400 positions expected to open in the 2025 edition.

The contracts supported in the first edition will be financed by tax revenues from the FCT budget and by investment RE-C06-i06 – “Science Plus Training” from the PRR. More information on funding sources can be found in CallNotice of the Call CallNotice of the Call

Details of Call can be found on the Call page.

PRR financing bar

Call for Institutional Scientific Employment Call (previous editions)

CEEC Institutional Status Report 2nd Edition

Information updated on November 13, 2023

60 institutions have positions for opening a Call;
60 program contracts signed;
305 contracts to be awarded – 128 career positions and 177 fixed-term or indefinite-term positions;
288 employment contracts submitted.

See the list of contracts planned for the institutions.