Does CERN pay their employees well?

According to anonymously submitted Glassdoor reviews, CERN employees rate their compensation and benefits as 4.3 out of 5. Find out more about salaries and benefits at CERN. This rating has been stable over the past 12 months.

How satisfied are employees working at CERN?

91% of CERN employees would recommend working there to a friend based on Glassdoor reviews . Employees also rated CERN 4.5 out of 5 for work life balance, 4.5 for culture and values and 3.7 for career opportunities.

What are the top reviewed jobs at CERN?

Technical Student (125) , Software Engineer (112) , Fellow (61) , PhD Student (35) , Senior Fellow (24) , Doctoral Student (23) , Research Fellow (23) , Internship (22) , Mechanical Engineer (20) , Junior Fellow (19) , Postdoctoral Fellow (19) , Engineer (18) , Project Associate (18) , Intern (16) , Administrative Student (15)

What are the pros of working at CERN according to real employee reviews?

"Good salary and tons of benefits." ((in 128 reviews)); "Best experience ever Great people" ((in 75 reviews)); "Amazing environment and great colleagues." ((in 60 reviews)); "Good benefits for CERN contracts" ((in 49 reviews)); "Good work life balance and vast interesting domains of activity." ((in 37 reviews))

What are the cons of working at CERN according to real employee reviews?

"Bad management, nothing else fdgdfgdf" ((in 38 reviews)); "No career progression; no teleworking outside of the region" ((in 16 reviews)); "For scientists, almost exclusively temporary contracts and almost no career opportunities inside or outside CERN." ((in 15 reviews)); "Had 5 supervisors, overall)" ((in 13 reviews)); "Incredible nepotism everywhere." ((in 7 reviews))

CERN reviews

4.4

91% would recommend to a friend

(856 total reviews)

Fabiola Gianotti

91% approve of CEO

59% positive business outlook

Company ratings over time

Ratings trend for the last 6 months (856 reviews)

Ratings by demographic groups

Race / Ethnicity

Gender

Sexual orientation

Disability

Parent or family caregiver

Veteran status

CERN has an employee rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars, based on 856 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The CERN employee rating is 21% above average for employers within the Regierung & öffentliche Verwaltung industry (3.6 stars).

Reviews by job title

856 reviews

5.0

Sep 24, 2022

basic

Anonymous employee

Recommend

CEO approval

Business Outlook

Pros

family problems and i am very poor

Cons

i love this job and this opportunity

5.0

Sep 23, 2022

One of the best research organizations to work at!

Jrf - junior research fellow

Recommend

CEO approval

Business Outlook

Pros

- great colleagues and opportunity to learn fundamental physics at the forefront. - diversity - people from nearly 100 nationalities come together to work at CERN. - Geneva is a great place to live in. - work-life balance

Cons

- sometimes technologies we use are not cutting edge in order to maintain legacy software or simply because operating a super massive machine such as LHC requires you to be safe and do things the old school way. not a complete drawback but - (if not in physics) good career starter but scope for permanent positions is limited.

5.0

Sep 18, 2022

great

Computational physicist

Recommend

CEO approval

Business Outlook

Pros

good benefits, interesting work , international

Cons

There are none really. that's it

Viewing 460 - 462 of 856 Reviews

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Jobs at CERN

Short Term Internship 2026

Genf

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Assistant Departmental Safety Officer (EN-RMS-2026-147-GRAE)

Administrative Student Programme 2026-3

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Early Career Professionals - Technical Field – Spontaneous Applications

Full-Stack Web Developer (SY-EPC-CCS-2026-155-GRAE)

CERN

CERN reviews

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basic

One of the best research organizations to work at!

great

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