How to Find a PhD Supervisor in Switzerland (and Get Funded)

A lot of "PhD funding in Switzerland" guides describe SNSF grants like a scholarship program you apply to directly. That framing misleads more than it helps. The vast majority of Swiss PhD candidates are employed, not awarded a scholarship, hired as doctoral assistants into a specific professor's research group, on a real employment contract with a real salary. That single fact changes how you should actually search: you're not filling out a funding application, you're looking for a job opening, or building the case for a professor to create one for you.

A Swiss PhD position is a job, not a scholarship award

Most doctoral candidates in Switzerland are hired on employment contracts, commonly referred to as doctoral assistant positions, funded through a specific professor's own research budget, whether that budget comes from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), a European Research Council or EU Horizon programme grant, an industry partnership, or another national or international research funder. You don't compete in a separate scholarship pool the way you might for a fellowship in another country, you apply for, or are offered, an actual position tied to a professor's grant and their current staffing need. Treating a Swiss PhD search like a scholarship hunt, browsing funding-body websites for open calls, misses where most real openings actually live: individual professors' own project pages and university job boards.

Two ways in: advertised positions and direct outreach

Because Swiss PhD positions function as jobs, they follow two familiar paths. The first is applying to an openly advertised position, posted on a university's own job board, a platform like Academic Positions or a Swiss university's HR portal, tied to a specific professor and project. The second is direct outreach: emailing a professor whose current, actively published work in your field genuinely interests you, to ask whether they have funding or expect an opening for a doctoral assistant. Both routes lead to the same place, a specific professor deciding to hire you, so a targeted email that references their actual recent research carries real weight even when there's no formal posting to respond to yet.

ETH Zurich and EPFL don't run the same process, and mixing them up costs you time

Most "how to find a PhD supervisor in Switzerland" advice treats the country's universities as one uniform system. They aren't, and the gap matters most at the two institutions international applicants target first. At ETH Zurich, there is no centralized doctoral school, and the Doctoral Administration does not facilitate placements or maintain a list of open positions on candidates' behalf: a specific professor's individual agreement to supervise you is a precondition for registering as a doctoral candidate at all, which is why ETH's own guidance names direct, individual contact with a professor as the primary route in. EPFL runs the sequence in reverse. Admission goes through EPFL's Doctoral School, which oversees 22 separate doctoral programs organized by field; you apply to a program first, through a formal portal with transcripts, a statement of objectives, and three references, and only after conditional acceptance do you finalize a thesis topic, a supervisor, and secured funding. In practice, that means you can credibly apply to an EPFL doctoral program before you've locked down a supervisor, something that generally doesn't work at ETH. Confirm which model your target department actually follows, and don't assume the "email the professor first" approach that works at ETH will work the same way for an EPFL doctoral program, or vice versa.

What the position actually pays

Minimum gross salaries for SNSF-funded doctoral positions increased to a floor of roughly CHF 50,000 a year starting 1 January 2026, and individual universities set their own scales on top of that baseline, some published first-year doctoral salaries sit in the roughly CHF 50,000 to 55,000 gross range, rising across later years of the position. These figures are adjusted periodically and vary by institution, field, and which funding source is actually paying your position, so confirm the current published scale directly with your specific university or funder before treating any number here as fixed. Whatever the exact figure, the structural point holds: this is a salary paid for employment, not a tax-exempt stipend awarded through a scholarship competition, which matters for how you'll be taxed and what social insurance coverage you're entitled to.

The visa gap most applicants don't plan for

This is the detail that catches non-EU/EFTA candidates off guard. Being physically present in Switzerland, even on a valid residence permit, doesn't automatically mean you're allowed to start working. Non-EU candidates need a residence permit that specifically includes a work permit secured before arrival, and the university-led process to obtain that work permit for a non-EU/EFTA national has been reported to take at least 3 months after arrival, a window during which you are not entitled to work as a doctoral assistant even once you're in the country. A residence permit without an accompanying activity authorization, or a student permit, does not guarantee that a work permit will follow. Build that 3-month-plus gap into your actual planning, coordinate the timeline directly with your hiring professor's HR department before you commit to a start date or give notice anywhere else.

Beyond SNSF: where else the funding actually comes from

Searching only for "SNSF PhD positions Switzerland" will miss a real share of genuinely funded openings. Swiss cantonal universities also hire doctoral researchers on positions funded through EU Horizon programme grants, industry partnerships, and other national and international research agencies, all channeled through a specific professor's own budget rather than a single centralized funding body. When you're researching a target professor, check their lab or group page for current project funding sources directly, rather than assuming SNSF is the only signal that a position might exist or become available.

A practical search order

• Identify professors at Swiss universities actively publishing in your specific subfield, using their lab or group pages to check current funding sources, not just SNSF listings.
• Check university job boards and platforms like Academic Positions for openly advertised doctoral assistant positions tied to those professors or their departments.
• Where no position is advertised, email the professor directly, referencing their specific recent published work, to ask about current or upcoming funding for a doctoral assistant.
• Once you have an offer, confirm the residence and work permit timeline with the university's HR or international office well before agreeing to a start date.

GradScoutFunding is built for that identification and outreach step: it searches professors by field and country, confirms they're actively publishing, and drafts a personalized first email grounded in their real recent paper for you to review and send yourself. It can't confirm in advance that a specific professor has an open doctoral assistant position or budget available, only that they're actively working and reachable, which is exactly the starting point a Swiss PhD search actually needs. The free tier gives 100 credits with no card required, and paid credit packs are one-time purchases that never expire.

Common questions