Careers

The Physics & Chemistry programme provides training for all academic and industrial research professions, as well as careers in higher education.

The vast majority of our Physics & Chemistry programme graduates continue their studies by pursuing a doctoral thesis funded by an academic or industrial contract.

Following the first year of their Master's, students can also prepare for the French agrégation competitive examination thanks to the "Teaching Professions" Master 2 programme at ENS Lyon. For more information, visit the websites for preparing for the  Physics and Chemistry agrégation exams.

The research placement at the end of the second year of the Master's generally constitutes a prelude to pursuing a thesis at the same laboratory. Almost all Physics & Chemistry degree holders obtain a permanent job in research or higher education following their thesis and a post-doctoral stay in France or abroad.

Types of jobs

The following chart presents the distribution of the various permanent jobs found by former Physics & Chemistry students having obtained a thesis (statistics for the Physics Major since 1988).

Job sectors

This programme prepares students for all of today's rapidly developing job sectors in Physics and Chemistry, via diverse coursework covering the most fundamental as well as the most hands-on subjects, digital modelling, and the connections between physics, chemistry and other scientific disciplines, such as biology or even economics and the social sciences.

The diversity of research placements successfully carried out at every level of the programme (Licence 3, Master 1 and Master 2) testifies to this thematic richness. One should also note opportunities to pursue top-level careers occasionally lying outside the programme's two major disciplines, notably thanks to competitive exams for integrating government agencies and the implementation of partnerships with French and European engineering schools, such as EPFL.

This great thematic diversity of job opportunities is made possible by the specific high standards of the broad-based education provided by the Écoles Normales Supérieures: far from simply skimming over problems, ENS training requires students to pursue a deep understanding of their discipline, thereby allowing for a solid, constructive approach, to innovate at the crossroads of theory, measurement and modelling.

Job locations

The Physics & Chemistry programme strongly favours dispersal. 15% of graduates find employment outside France following their thesis. The following map indicates the geographic distribution of permanent jobs obtained in France (statistics for the Physics Major since 1988).