Join the Tenure Track at TUM

TUM Faculty Tenure Track is the performance-driven career path for promising early-career scientists with international experience.

Jia Chen, professor for environmental sensing and modelling, crossing a street in Munich

It is the first true tenure-track system based on international standards at a German university: the TUM Faculty Tenure Track, which leads to a permanent W3 professorship upon successful evaluation.

For the TUM tenure track program, we seek early career scientists with first scientific successes and a convincing research program. The W2 professorship is limited to 6 years with a tenure option - that means the chance of promotion to a permanent W3 professorship.

During the tenure track phase

From appointment to tenure evaluation

Assistant professors are expected to develop their academic profile during the tenure track phase. To give them guidance, they are accompanied by a mentoring team comprised of experienced professors.

The university follows the progress of its assistant professors through performance interviews and status assessments, and can thus provide targeted and individual support for their career development. The quality-based tenure evaluation following international best practice takes place at the end of the tenure track phase. A positive result is required for promotion to a tenured W3 professorship.

Which development opportunities do assistant professors have?

Assistant professors are on pay scale W2 and their appointment is temporary, usually for six years but always on a track to be tenured. This option means that they will be promoted to a tenured W3 associate professorship after a positive tenure evaluation, and will be offered a salary and resources package. Later in their career, they could be appointed to a full professorship (also W3, with supplemental package) if they meet TUM’s demanding performance criteria.

Evaluation and promotion

Questions about the application?

Details on the process from application to appointment, the necessary documents, the exact entry requirements and more.

Application FAQ

Attractive resources

To ensure their independence in research and teaching, TUM Tenure Track Assistant Professors (W2) receive a competitive entry package and are free to apply for external funding for their own research. They are not answerable to any chair, and have the same rights and obligations as all other professors within their department and at the university as a whole. The entry package features:

  • A position for a research associate

  • An annual budget

  • Required room infrastructure (e.g. lab and office space)

  • Access to the scientific infrastructure

  • Active support in developing the professorship (e.g. through the schools’ onboarding offices, their mentoring team, dean, or the TUM Faculty Tenure Treack Recruitment Team)

Additional resources can be negotiated individually and will depend on the requirements of the specific field of research.

Academic freedom

  • Equal institutional rights: Assistant professors (W2) have the same institutional rights and obligations within their school and at the university as a whole as all other TUM professors. They are fully integrated into university decision-making processes.
  • Doctorates and examinations: Assistant professors can supervise doctoral students independently and exercise all examination rights and obligations.
  • Eligibility for third-party funding: Assistant professors are entitled to apply for external funding and use this for their own research and teaching activities.

Research funding support Doctorates: TUM Graduate School Teaching and examination ressources

Reduced teaching workload

Assistant professors are required to teach for only five hours per week during the semester instead of the usual nine so that they can dedicate more time to their research activities. Depending on their school, this teaching can take the form of lectures, tutorials, seminars or general undergraduate teaching. Following a positive tenure evaluation, they will be required to teach for nine hours per week, which is the usual workload at German universities.

Teaching at TUM

Balancing career and family life

TUM offers a wide range of support for academics to reconcile their professional obligations with their family life.

The TUM Faculty Tenure Track career system also takes family commitments into account – offering, for instance, more flexible working hours and factoring a researcher’s family situation into their performance evaluations.

Tenure Track: Family and career

An excellent environment

Tenure Track Professors are joining a community of excellent scientists with entering this university. This environment gives them a world-class benchmark against which they can measure their own work. Assistant professors can therefore test their own scientific creativity while working on complex interdisciplinary research projects.

Jasmin Meinecke works at the Cluster of Excellence MCQST on developing entanglement detection schemes

Cluster of Excellence

We conduct research on the origin of the universe and life, sustainable energy supply, quantum technology and systems neurology in four clusters of excellence together with top-class partners.

Clusters at a glance
Prof. Julijana Gjorgijeva and Prof. Simon Jacob

Our professors

Get to know our international faculty of 666 outstanding scientists who research and teach at our university.

Profiles of our professors
Students walking through the entrance hall of the newly finished building for the TUM Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering on the Garching campus (Image: Andreas Heddergott / TUM).

Schools and research centers

Our schools form the academic foundation of our university, connected by integrative research institutes at the interfaces between disciplines to create an innovation-friendly matrix.

Schools and research centers

Do you have any questions? Contact us

Technical University of Munich
Faculty Recruitment, Career Advancement and Dual Career
Arcisstr. 21
D-80333 Munich
facultyrecruitingspam prevention@tum.de

Entire Team

Data protection notice

When applying for a position at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), you are submitting personal information. As such, we request that you take note of the privacy policy as stated in Art. 13 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for the collection and processing of personal data in the context of your application (Datenschutzhinweise gemäß Art. 13 Datenschutz-Grundverordnung (DSGVO) zur Erhebung und Verarbeitung von personenbezogenen Daten im Rahmen Ihrer Bewerbung). By submitting your application, you confirm that you have acknowledged the above data protection information.

Documents on the faculty recruitment and career system at TUM

TUM Faculty Recruitment and Career System

Regulations on the TUM Faculty Tenure Track

TUM Faculty Recruitment Code of Conduct

Find further documents in the service compass

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