🔍 Resource · ~9 min read · Updated 29 September 2026 · By Dr. Deepak Malik

How to read a European PhD job advert — decoding "E13, 65%, 3 years, third-party funded"

A student forwards me an advert almost every week and asks what it actually means. The listing says something like "TV-L E13, 65%, 3 Jahre, drittmittelfinanziert" and stops there, as if every reader already speaks fluent German HR. Most don't. Universities aren't hiding anything — this is completely normal shorthand to them — but nobody hands you the translation key. Four or five words in an advert can tell you almost everything about the offer before you've written a single email, if you know how to read them.

In short: a typical German PhD advert compresses four separate facts into a few terms — your pay grade (E13), your hours as a percentage of full time, your contract length, and where the money actually comes from (a permanent university budget line or a specific external grant). Decode those correctly and you know roughly what you'll be paid, how long the position is funded for, and how much risk sits underneath it, all before you've contacted anyone.

Start with the job title, not the pay grade

Most German PhD positions aren't advertised as "PhD student" at all. The title is usually "wissenschaftliche/r Mitarbeiter/in" — research associate — often with "(m/w/d)" tacked on the end. That's not a comment on the role; German employment law (the Allgemeines Gleichbehandlungsgesetz) requires job adverts to be gender-neutral, and "m/w/d" simply signals the post is open to male, female and diverse applicants. The title itself matters more than the abbreviation: you're being hired as a university employee to do a job, and the doctorate is the qualification you build while doing it — not a degree programme you enrol in. That framing is why the rest of the advert reads like a job posting rather than an admissions notice.

"E13" is the pay grade, not the salary

E13 refers to Entgeltgruppe 13 of TV-L, the collective pay agreement covering employees of Germany's federal states, including nearly all public universities. It tells you which band you're on, not the number on your payslip — that depends on your percentage (next step) and your "Stufe", an experience step that rises automatically every couple of years you stay employed. Under the table currently valid from 1 April 2026 to 28 February 2027, a full-time E13 post at the entry step (Stufe 1) is €4,759.37 gross a month. Our resource on how PhD funding in Germany actually works goes through the full contract-versus-stipend picture, including what a DAAD stipend looks like instead — because plenty of adverts skip E13 entirely and quote a stipend amount in euros instead.

The percentage is the number that actually decides your pay

A PhD advert rarely offers a full 100% post. Most sit somewhere between 50% and 75% of full time, and 65% is one of the single most common figures you'll see — roughly the midpoint of that range. The percentage applies to both your hours and your pay: a 65% E13 post pays 65% of the full-time gross figure above, for 65% of a full working week. Institutes sometimes structure posts below 100% deliberately, on the reasoning that a lighter formal workload leaves more protected time for the thesis itself rather than teaching or admin duties — that's a common explanation, not a universal rule, so it's worth asking your prospective supervisor directly what the remaining time is actually spent on. Two people at the same institute on "a funded PhD position" can take home very different amounts because one is on 50% and the other on 75%. Never assume; ask for the number.

The number of years is a funding-cycle number, not a personal promise

German law (the Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz, or WissZeitVG) allows universities to hire academic staff on fixed-term contracts for up to six years before a doctorate, which is why almost every PhD post you'll see is "befristet" — fixed-term — rather than permanent; permanent posts essentially don't exist at this career stage, so don't read "befristet" as a red flag. The specific length quoted in the advert, often three years, usually tracks the underlying grant rather than a promise about your thesis. A standard DFG individual grant (Sachbeihilfe), for example, is approved in blocks of up to three years, with a further block possible only if the supervisor applies for and receives a renewal. So "3 years" tells you how long the current funding is secured for, not how long your contract is guaranteed to run if the thesis takes longer — that second question is one you should ask directly, and our resource on structured versus individual PhD positions covers how contract length interacts with the type of position you're applying to.

"Third-party funded" tells you where the risk actually sits

This is the term students skip past most often, and it's the one worth pausing on. "Drittmittelfinanziert" (third-party funded) means the position is paid for by money the institute won for a specific project — from the DFG, an EU programme like Horizon Europe, industry, or a foundation — rather than from the university's own permanent budget (a "Haushaltsstelle" or "Planstelle"). This isn't unusual or a warning sign; most PhD posts in Germany are funded this way, including plenty of excellent ones. What it does mean is that your contract's real end date is tied to that specific grant's timeline, not to an administrative promise from the university. If the project ends and isn't renewed, the position ends with it, regardless of where your thesis stands. The honest question to ask a prospective supervisor is not "is this third-party funded?" — assume it is — but "what happens at the end of this grant, and has your group successfully renewed funding before?"

The rest of the shorthand, in one place

A handful of other terms show up constantly and are worth knowing on sight. "Vollzeit" is full-time, "Teilzeit" is part-time — either can appear alongside a specific percentage. "Bewerbungsfrist" is the application deadline; miss it and there's usually no exception. "Ausschreibung" just means the advert or posting itself, so "Stellenausschreibung" is simply "job advert." "Ggf." (gegebenenfalls) means "if applicable" and usually flags an optional requirement, like a language certificate only needed for certain nationalities. None of these change the substance of the offer the way E13, the percentage, the contract length or the funding source do — but recognising them means you stop re-reading the same sentence three times trying to guess.

Turn the decoding into three sharp questions before you say yes

Once you can read an advert, use that to ask better questions rather than better guesses. Before accepting any offer: confirm the exact percentage and whether it's fixed for the whole contract or reviewed each year; ask plainly whether the post is third-party funded and, if so, what the group's track record is on renewals; and ask what a realistic extension looks like if the thesis runs past the contracted end date, since that's common and not a failure. Our resources on emailing a professor and whether to contact professors before applying cover how to raise these without sounding like you're negotiating before you've even started. If you want to see what real adverts actually look like once you can read them, our live board of funded PhD positions is free to browse and updated daily. Our free 7-day PhD challenge walks through the rest of the application a step at a time, and the rest of our free resources cover each document in turn. And if you'd rather have someone read a specific advert with you, our PhD mentorship pairs you with a mentor from our network of active researchers who have been on the other side of exactly this shorthand.

⚠️ What I see students get wrong reading adverts

Reading "E13" as the actual salary, rather than the pay grade you still need a percentage and a step to turn into a number
Assuming a "3 years" contract is a personal guarantee rather than usually the length of the underlying grant
Skipping past "drittmittelfinanziert" without asking what happens if the grant isn't renewed
Treating "(m/w/d)" as a comment on the role, when it's a routine legal requirement on every German job advert
Comparing two adverts by percentage alone without checking they're quoting the same year's TV-L table
Treating "befristet" as unusual — almost every PhD contract in German academia is fixed-term at this career stage

FAQ

Does "third-party funded" mean the position is less secure than a normal PhD post?▼

Not really, because there mostly isn't a "normal" alternative to compare it against — the large majority of PhD posts in Germany are third-party funded, including many of the strongest ones, since permanent university budget lines rarely get used for doctoral positions at all. The useful question isn't whether a position is third-party funded, since almost all of them are, but how solid the specific grant behind it is and whether the group has a track record of successful renewals.

What if the advert doesn't mention E13 or a percentage at all?▼

Then it's probably not a TV-L employment contract — plenty of positions, especially DAAD-funded places and some foundation scholarships, are stipends quoted directly in euros instead, and this specific shorthand doesn't apply to them. (Max Planck institutes are different again: since 2021 they use funding contracts at 65% of TVöD E13, the federal pay table.) It's also worth knowing this decoding is specific to the German TV-L system: an advert in the Netherlands, Sweden or elsewhere in Europe will use that country's own pay scale and terminology instead. Whenever an advert is unclear, ask directly rather than guess — see our resource on how PhD funding in Germany actually works for the stipend side of this.

Is a lower percentage, like 50%, always a bad sign?▼

No — it can genuinely be intentional, to leave more protected time for the thesis rather than administrative or teaching duties, and some students actively prefer it for exactly that reason. It can also simply reflect what the grant can afford. Neither explanation is more common than the other, so treat a lower percentage as a question to ask rather than a warning sign on its own: ask what the remaining time is spent on, and whether it's typical for that group.

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