These are a few notes regarding the application to CS faculty positions in France, based on my experience applying during the academic year 2021–2022. Please note:

• this is still valid in 2024 but may get outdated later on,
• this concerns early-career positions, there are also full professor or research director positions.

Types of position

There are currently two kinds of faculty positions in France¹

• Full-time researcher positions.
• Associate professor positions: half of the working time is devoted to teaching duties, and the other half to research. Associate professor positions usually require applicants to speak French, at least for the on-site interviews, and then to teach.

The good news is that, these are permanent positions from the start, there is no tenure to get. ² The less good news is that salaries are not internationally competitive. At least, a recent law introduced a lower bound, stating that newly hired researchers and associate professors should be paid at least twice the national minimum salary (called SMIC in France). As of writing, the monthly net SMIC is €1,426. In most cases (except ISFP below where the situation is currently unclear), you then have pre-defined salary raises each 2 to 4 years. Note that there has been little to no specific raises following post-covid inflation.

In the remainder, I will focus on researcher positions as I have a bit more (successful) experience in this case.

There are currently two national bodies offering researcher positions for CS in France:

• CNRS. CNRS has a national application process. Depending on their field, candidates can apply to different CNRS Sections: CN6 or CN7. ³⁴ CN6 is usually the more theoretical side of CS, and CN7 the more applied one. In 2024, there were 8 positions offered for CN6 and 8 offered for CN7. Candidates need to choose between 2 and 3 teams in which they would be integrated.
• Inria. Inria has a local application process for each of its centers, where between 2 and 6 positions are opened. For each center, you can apply to a single team (and usually, team can only support a single candidate). However, you can apply in team A in city X and team B in city Y. Inria offers two kind of researcher positions: CRCN and ISFP. CRCN are the more traditional positions, also offered by CNRS. ISFP are contractual positions (with no end term), and higher starting salary. However, raises are less defined, and there are some differences regarding social security and retirement too. My advice is to apply to both CRCN and ISFP positions, and decide later if you have the choice.

Application process

For researcher positions, it is highly important to contact informally teams with close research topics during October/November (i.e., before the applications officially open in December/January). In my experience, teams are always happy to discuss potential projects and supportive ones will provide decisive help during the application process.

The overall application process is as follows:

1. Fall of year Y: Contact teams as soon as possible, usually before the number of job openings is known (see above).
2. December Y for CNRS, January Y+1 for Inria: Submit written application describing your CV, current research, and describing your research project.
3. Spring Y+1: On-site interviews. Each site have their own rules on talk and Q/A duration. Be sure to respect the defined limits. In some cases, at least for CNRS, people living abroad can present remotely (I would be a bit wary of this option and discuss it with the teams I am applying to before trying that). Once the interview day is over, the jury will define a first ranking, called “admissibilité”. However, be careful, this is not the last step!
4. June Y+1: Another jury will take the “admissibilité” ranking and transform it into an “admission” ranking. They have the right to perform any permutation of the ranking (but they cannot add names of people who were not in the first ranking). I am told this step can be used to steer scientific policies. The admission ranking is the final one that will be used to offer positions to candidates, to start between September of Y+1 to February of Y+2.

Research project

Note that your research project should be split into short, medium and long term goals, showing that you have a strong scientific independence ensuring you will not get bored :) Something not to do is to explain how you will continue your PhD work as the jury expects scientific independence from yourself.

Team integration

Inria research projects should tightly cover potential collaborations with the team, and highlight the new expertise you bring and how it would benefit the team. My impression is that the team integration is less important in CNRS applications, and written as a separate section from the research project.

Jury members are not all experts!

I think the main difficulty of this exercise (written application and interview) is that your research should be understandable by, and appeal to, most jury members. These members are usually 1-2 experts of your domain (which will take a deeper look at your application), but most will not be experts and have a say in the final decisions too. Your research project and the presentation of past work should also highlight the importance of these works, and the technical difficulties.

My experience

I defended my PhD in November 2021, and applied during the same academic year, which is the earliest I could (and a bit early if you look at the statistics). This was following (excellent) advice that:

1. only people who applied got positions
2. I would amortize the cost of preparing applications in future years

I am describing the results below to highlight that it might be worth applying to multiple teams. I applied for researcher positions at CNRS, Inria Lille, Inria Lyon, Inria Rennes (both CRCN and ISFP), and as associate professor at ENS de Lyon.

• I was not offered interviews at CNRS and Inria Rennes.
• I interviewed at ENS de Lyon, but ranked second and there was only one job, taken by the first person.
• I interviewed at Inria Lille and Inria Lyon, and was ranked there both for admissibilité and admission. In the end I got offers for both and chose Lille.

Mutiple offers?

If you have choices between multiple locations, congratulations, you now have a first world problem ;) I would suggest to consider both the personal and professional implications of each choice. On the personal side, it is difficult to give advice. On the professional side, some suggestions: are there more potential collaborators in a location? More prospective students for future work? Is the building in a better shape? Would there be funding differences? For example, CNRS offers some starting package for your research, but at Inria it really depends on your location.

Resources

• A very comprehensive guide by Antoine Amarilli!
• Official guidelines as of 2024.
  • CN6. In particular section 11.1 discusses age/experience of candidates. Note that following ERC policy, maternity counts as a break of 18 months per child, leaving thus more time to apply in this case.
  • CN7,
  • Inria guidelines. Section 5 discusses age/experience of candidates; Inria follows the same ERC policy.
• French only, sorry. My Inria written application for Lille, and my slides for the interview. I was offered (and gladly accepted!) a CRCN position.

Acknowledgments

A big thank you to Maria Boritchev and Aymeric Fromherz for their proofreading and suggestions.