Are you considering applying for a professorship and joining us as a colleague? Then, let us give you more information on what it would be like to work at our university and department. This webpage links to relevant information about UPB as an employer and provides you with interesting department-specific details.

Paderborn University: Seizing Opportunities, Driving Innovation, Taking Responsibility

Paderborn University is a modern research and educational institution in Ostwestfalen-Lippe (East Westphalia-Lippe), one of the major economic regions in Germany. With an innovative mindset and our commitment to freedom, democracy, and social values, we are heading for a bright future. We promote diversity at all levels and, as a campus university, offer short distances in every respect. Interdisciplinary cooperation, regional and international collaborations, a research- and practice-oriented range of courses, and a culture of open communication are the hallmarks of our university. Through joint projects with companies and a lively start-up culture, Paderborn University is also a key player in the region's development and is closely linked to the city of Paderborn. In research, teaching, studies, and administration, we offer a wide range of opportunities to break new ground together and contribute to societal progress.
The main campus in the south of the city is home to seminar buildings, lecture halls, offices, laboratories, and more. Short distances connect the administration, the central contact points, and all five faculties of Paderborn University. Relax and linger in the abundant green outdoor spaces here.
In addition, various branches of our university offer space for research, teaching, and innovation. At Zukunftsmeile, the interdisciplinary Software Innovation Campus Paderborn (SICP) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechatronic Systems Design (IEM) are hubs closely engaged in joint research between Paderborn University and regional companies. The adjacent Fürstenallee is home to many groups from the Computer Science Department and the Heinz Nixdorf Institute, which is renowned for its strong interdisciplinary foundational research. Other groups are located at Pohlweg on UPB's main campus.
Approximately one kilometre south of the campus, the Paderborn Technology Park houses individual branches of our faculties. The Start-up Campus OWL on the former site of the Barker Barracks is the new home for the members of Paderborn University's Technology Transfer and Start-up Centre (TecUP). At the heart of Paderborn, our General Students' Committee (AStA) has established the AStA Stadtcampus, a hub for education, culture, engagement, and community.

Our Cooperations

To overcome the challenges of the present and to collectively shape the future, Paderborn University is committed to cooperating with its academic and industrial partners. We are members of numerous networks and alliances at regional, national, and international levels, including the University Alliance UA11+, Transfer Alliance (TransferAllianz), Campus OWL, It's OWL, and COLOURS Alliance.
https://www.uni-paderborn.de/en/university#our-cooperations

Welcome Service at the Paderborn University

The Welcome Services for International Researchers and Employees will assist you and your employees with any questions you may have about working at our university and living in Paderborn.
https://www.uni-paderborn.de/en/university/international-relations/welcomeservices

We are family-friendly:

At Paderborn University, we attach great importance to the compatibility of family and career. We want to ensure a good balance between work or study-related commitments and responsibility for children or dependants in need of care.
www.uni-paderborn.de/en/equality/family-friendly-university

Paderborn University also provides guidance and support for newly appointed professors. The Dual Career Service helps you find individual solutions such as accommodation, suitable childcare, or support for your partner's career.
https://www.uni-paderborn.de/en/university/dual-career-couples

We are health-conscious:

Paderborn University prioritises healthy living and working conditions. Our Healthy University Task Force initiates and supports respective measures.
https://www.uni-paderborn.de/en/university/healthy-university

We are sustainable:

We are working together to take responsibility for the here and now, as well as for future generations. When it comes to sustainability, the scientific community also has a role to play. Paderborn University supports sustainable development with diverse activities in all fields. 
https://www.uni-paderborn.de/en/university/sustainability

We are diverse:

For many years, Paderborn University has actively championed equal opportunities, a work culture that promotes diversity, and the inclusion of diversity issues in research and teaching. Our Diversity Portal provides a wealth of information.
https://www.uni-paderborn.de/en/equality/diversity/portal

The Department of Computer Science

The Department of Computer Science, along with the Departments of Mathematics and
Electrical Engineering, forms one of the five university faculties. We offer four main teaching programmes: a Bachelor's and a Master's in Computer Science (the former is taught primarily in German, while the latter is entirely in English) and, jointly with the Electrical Engineering Department, a Bachelor's and a Master's in Computer Engineering. Notably, our Master's programmes are highly international, attracting hundreds of applicants from around the world every semester. In North Rhine-Westfalia, as a Junior Professor (W1), your legal teaching load is initially 4 and later 5 hours per week. As a W2 or W3 professor, the workload is 9 hours. That teaching is supported by Ph.D. students and PostDocs, see below. 
Find out more about our teaching programmes here: www.uni-paderborn.de/en/studyoffer/course_of_study/computer-science-master https://www.uni-paderborn.de/en/studyoffer/course_of_study/computer-engineering-master

Are you applying from abroad, maybe not yet well-versed in the German language? Our general expectation is that, at least if you are applying for a tenured (W2 or W3) professorship, you are willing to learn German and should reach a proficiency allowing you to teach basic Bachelor courses in the German language as well. Sounds hard? Do not worry: the department will gladly organize intensive German courses perfectly adjusted to your specific needs. In the meantime, you can teach any courses in our Master's programme and elective courses in our Bachelor's programme in English.
In terms of research, the department has made the strategic decision to pursue five core research areas: Domain-Specific Computing, Quantum Computing, Data Science, Security, and Software Engineering. While of course we encourage all quality research, these are the areas in which we frequently and jointly excel, and are primarily seeking to, e.g., acquire
grants for collaborative research projects. Prime examples are the Transregional Collaborative Research Centre Constructing Explainability or the research network Sustainable Life-cycle of Intelligent Socio-Technical Systems (SAIL). 
Find out more about our research here: https: //cs.uni-paderborn.de/en/#research

One of the great benefits of being a professor in Germany is the constitutional right to total freedom in research and teaching(see article 5(3) here). Of course, we expect you to coordinate with the department what you teach and when, and we expect a solid level of proficiency in your teaching, yet how exactly you teach things and which elective courses you offer is totally up to you. And in research you are free as a bird. Of course, we welcome research that allows for close collaboration with colleagues but in the end, it is all up to you. Fewer and fewer countries offer such level of freedom.

Particularly tenured professors, we also expect to actively participate in the department's and the university's self-administration. German universities are organised in a very democratic way, which gives plenty of opportunities for such an active engagement. On the department level, we run a biweekly CS Faculty Meeting, and on the faculty level, there is a monthly Faculty Council meeting. On the university level, the Senate meets at similar intervals - and all these boards also have professorial CS members. Fresh hires to the department typically start small, contributing, for example, to the examination board or other hiring committees. After some years, a stronger engagement is expected. In Germany, department chairs and even deans are typically elected in a rotating manner, giving us all plenty of opportunities for personal career development.

Financially, the CS department is organised in a rather modern fashion. Most resources are pooled centrally within the department, so that they can easily be provided to each of us on a need basis. As a new professor at our department, you will be endowed with a generous startup package, the exact size of which is up to negotiation. This package typically lasts for five years. After this time, we expect one to have acquired a good enough amount of third- party funding to get by easily, even without additional department funding in most situations. When applying for grants in Germany, UPB typically obtains around 22% of overhead relative to the overall grant amount. Of these 22%, currently 40% are forwarded to the individual principal investigator(s), resulting in a total of almost 9%. With larger grants, this money is usually sufficient to cover expenses such as travel, equipment, and other recurring costs. In the unlikely event that a professor runs out of personal funds, which is virtually never the case, the department will do its best to cover at least the basics, such as travelling to conferences for paper presentations, or even provide temporary bridging funds to help secure continued financing for PhD positions until new projects start.

What sets professorships in Germany apart from those in many other countries is that they are typically endowed with several fixed Ph.D. positions. Particularly, as a professor in our CS department, you will typically be given between 1-3 Ph.D. positions, which the department pays for, and which you can use to finance that number of Ph.D. students (or PostDocs) at any time. In Germany, these positions resemble regular, well-paid jobs that come with full social benefits such as health and unemployment insurance. A full-time PhD position (the "E13" salary level) typically starts at around €4,600 per month and increases over time. After taxes and social contributions, the net income is roughly €2,900 per month. In a city like Paderborn, this is sufficient for a comfortable living standard and easily allows students to rent a flat for themselves and their families, making PhD positions at our university very attractive. Every such position comes with a legal teaching requirement of 4 hours per week; in Germany, every academic researcher is also a teacher.
To give you an order of magnitude, the package for a Junior Professor (W1) will often comprise one such position, as well as the package for a W2 Professorship. For full W3 professorships, the package usually comprises three positions. All positions come with at least part-time secretarial and technical support. This is because we expect full professors to run several third-party funded projects simultaneously at any given time. The additional three positions can then be used to extend any researcher's employment contract after a grant has run out.

If your research requires on-demand computing resources, we can support that without any difficulty. Our Informatik Rechnerbetrieb ( https://cs.uni-paderborn.de/en/irb ) operates an internal cluster of virtual machines, allowing you to provision systems with dozens of gigabytes of RAM, several terabytes of storage, or dedicated GPUs if needed. For larger workloads, you can request additional resources through the Paderborn University Center for Parallel Computing (PC2) - a National High-Performance Computing Centre - which provides infrastructure for demanding scientific computations. pc2.uni-paderborn.de/