ISRO hires researchers in two quite different ways, and confusing them costs people a lot of wasted effort. There is the centralised recruitment for permanent Scientist/Engineer ‘SC’ posts, which runs through a written examination and is advertised a few times a year. And there is the steady stream of temporary research posts — Junior Research Fellow, Research Associate, Project Scientist — advertised centre by centre, selected by interview, and far less well known. This guide is about the second kind, using the Space Applications Centre’s current advertisement as a worked example, because it is unusually detailed and the rules in it apply across the Department of Space.
1. What ISRO’s research posts actually are
A single ISRO advertisement can carry a dozen or more distinct posts, each with its own “post code”, its own qualification, and its own scope of work. The Space Applications Centre’s advertisement SAC:02:2026, open until 30 September 2026, has sixteen post codes covering three levels:
- Junior Research Fellow (post codes 01 to 07). Entry level, for master’s graduates. At SAC these span superconducting millimetre-wave receivers, RF mixed-signal chip design, VLSI and signal processing, integrated photonics and semiconductor quantum devices, infrared detectors, atmospheric and ocean sciences, geosciences, computer science and geoinformatics.
- Research Associate (post codes 08 to 10). The postdoctoral level, for PhD holders, covering satellite meteorology and data assimilation, numerical ocean modelling, radiative transfer for greenhouse-gas monitoring, and remote sensing of forests and wetlands.
- Project Scientist-I (post codes 11 to 16). Contract research posts on specific projects: cryosphere studies with NISAR data, blue-carbon mapping, soil-moisture retrieval, crustal deformation, hydrology, and SAR modelling and inversion.
The practical consequence is that you should read an ISRO advertisement looking for your post code, not for a job title. Two posts with the same name in the same advertisement can want completely different degrees.
2. What they pay
ISRO follows the standard central rates, and states them plainly:
- Junior Research Fellow: ₹37,000 a month for the first and second year, then ₹42,000, plus House Rent Allowance.
- Project Scientist-I: ₹56,000 a month plus HRA.
- Research Associate: ₹58,000, ₹61,000 or ₹67,000 a month plus HRA, at RA-1, RA-2 or RA-3, fixed as a consolidated amount according to your qualification and experience.
Two conditions attached to this are easy to miss. HRA is paid at the rate in force at the place of posting only if you are not given hostel accommodation, and the fellowship amount is treated as basic pay for that calculation. Medical benefits cover you alone, not your family. Beyond that, the advertisement says selected candidates “will not be entitled to any benefits or concessions admissible to regular employees” — so do not assume the wider terms of a government job apply.
3. The eligibility rules that disqualify people
This is where ISRO is stricter than most, and where the majority of avoidable rejections happen.
- The national test is compulsory for JRFs. For post codes 01 to 07 you need a valid CSIR-UGC NET (including lectureship), GATE, or a national-level examination conducted by a central government department or agency — DST, DBT, DAE, DOS, DRDO, MoE, ICAR, ICMR, IIT, IISc, IISER or NISER are all named. Crucially, the score must be valid on the closing date, 30 September 2026.
- The marks thresholds are specific. An M.E./M.Tech. needs at least 60% averaged over all semesters, or CGPA 6.5 on a 10-point scale. An M.Sc./B.E./B.Tech. needs 65%, or CGPA 6.84 on a 10-point scale.
- You cannot convert CGPA to a percentage. ISRO states this explicitly: where the degree certificate gives only CGPA, that CGPA must itself meet the criterion, “regardless of whether any conversion formula is prescribed by the University”. The reverse applies too. If your certificate shows both, meeting either one is enough.
- Marks are not rounded. 64.9% is not 65%.
- Age. 28 years for JRFs (post codes 01 to 07) and 35 years for post codes 08 to 16, calculated as on the closing date. Relaxations: five years for SC/ST, three for OBC-NCL, and further relaxation for serving central government employees, persons with benchmark disabilities and ex-servicemen, as per Government of India rules.
- Integrated and dual degrees have their own rules about which CGPA counts — read that clause carefully if your degree is one of these.
4. How selection works: interview only
There is no written test for these posts. ISRO shortlists on academic record and subject specialisation if the number of applications is large, and then prepares the selection panel on interview performance alone. The committee’s decision on shortlisting is final.
Three procedural details worth knowing:
- Shortlists and the interview schedule are published on the SAC website.
- Call letters go out only by e-mail.
- If you are not shortlisted, you will not be contacted at all. Silence is the outcome, not an oversight.
Because everything rides on one interview, the preparation that matters is depth in your own work rather than breadth. Expect to explain your master’s or doctoral project in detail, including what did not work, and to answer fundamentals in your subject.
5. Applying: the mechanics
Applications are online only — physical applications are not entertained — and there is no application fee for any post. For SAC:02:2026 the portal is open from 10:00 on 10 September 2026 to 17:00 on 30 September 2026.
Some hard-won practical advice:
- Do not wait for the last evening. The portal closes at 17:00, not midnight.
- Print the application summary the day you apply. ISRO warns that the site will not be open for printing the application or registration summary after the deadline passes, and you will want that application number for all future correspondence.
- Reach the portal through the official advertisement page rather than typing an address from memory. As of today the address printed in the SAC advertisement, career.sac.gov.in, does not resolve, while careers.sac.gov.in does — so follow the link from the ISRO careers page to be sure you are on the genuine portal.
- Check your qualification was completed within the normal course duration, which ISRO states as a pre-requisite.
6. What the work is actually like
This is the part that rarely appears in coaching material. ISRO’s research posts are tied to instruments and missions, so the work is concrete in a way that university research often is not.
At SAC, a fellow on post code 01 works on superconducting receiver front-ends at millimetre wave — device modelling, non-linear circuit simulation, 3D electromagnetic simulation and cryogenic testing. A fellow on post code 04 retrieves geophysical parameters from meteorological satellites and works on monsoon processes and aerosol–cloud–precipitation interactions. Post code 06 is squarely modern computer science: agentic AI and large language model integration, prompt engineering, AI debugging, and AI-based methods for meteorology, oceanography and hydrology, alongside processing L-band and S-band SAR data from NISAR, the radar satellite built jointly by ISRO and NASA.
Several of the Project Scientist posts are explicitly built around NISAR, which launched in 2025 — soil moisture retrieval, ice velocity over the Himalaya and Antarctica, crustal deformation measured by interferometry. If you want to work with a brand-new satellite’s data rather than an archive, these are unusually good posts.
7. A realistic view of the trade-offs
Be clear about what these posts are. They are temporary, for a specific duration, and the advertisement states that they “will not confer any claim or right for regular appointment in any DOS/ISRO Centre”. The number of vacancies is provisional and can go up or down, and ISRO reserves the right to cancel the recruitment or leave posts unfilled.
What you get in exchange is access: to instruments, to mission data before it is public, and to scientists who have flown hardware. For many people that access has been the thing that made a later PhD, a permanent scientist post, or a move into the space industry possible. Just go in with the terms understood rather than assumed.
Where to find these advertisements
ISRO publishes everything on its careers page, including centre-specific advertisements from SAC, VSSC, URSC, NRSC and others, each with a bilingual PDF. Windows are short — typically three weeks — so check regularly rather than occasionally. We list verified ISRO research posts with the eligibility, stipend and stages set out in plain language on our ISRO jobs page, and you can browse by level on our junior research fellow and research associate pages. For the wider picture of how Indian government research recruitment works, see our guide to government research jobs in India.
Sources
- ISRO, Careers
- Space Applications Centre, advertisement SAC:02:2026 dated 10 September 2026, recruitment of Junior Research Fellows, Research Associates and Project Scientist-I (bilingual advertisement PDF published on isro.gov.in)
