IITM Pune Project Associate PER/07/2026 — 31 Vacancies

IITM Pune Project Associate Recruitment 2026: Overview

The Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), an autonomous research institute fully funded by the Ministry of Earth Sciences, is holding a walk-in recruitment under Advertisement No. PER/07/2026 for six kinds of project posts. The jobs sit inside live research projects on lightning, fog, monsoon prediction, urban weather testbeds and air pollution, so the work is hands-on with instruments, models and data.

Two projects get special mention in the notice. COPE is a joint project with the Research Council of Norway that is building early warning systems for heat and air-pollution exposure in Delhi and Kolkata. The RSPCB project with the Rajasthan State Pollution Control Board runs an air-quality forecasting system for Jaipur that predicts PM2.5 and PM10 one to five days ahead. Every post is a temporary project contract, not a regular IITM job.

Posts and Disciplines

Engineering graduates fit the Senior Project Associate and Project Associate posts as well as science postgraduates, while B.Sc holders and three-year diploma engineers can go for the Technical Assistant, Project Assistant and Field/Laboratory Assistant posts.

Post-wise Duties

Senior Project Associate

You will either build and maintain websites and mobile apps that share lightning information, or carry out fog and atmospheric chemistry measurements in the field.

Project Associate II

You will run observation campaigns on aerosols, clouds, rain and lightning, look after the instruments and clean up the data. The Alwar-coded post is different: you will draft proposals, write progress reports and run review meetings for the project.

Project Associate I

Depending on the project, you will look after the Chennai testbed at SRM Ramapuram, join field trips to Kaziranga National Park under the METFLUX coordinator at Tezpur, analyse monsoon mission model output, build web tools for COPE, or run the WRF-Chem air-quality model.

Technical Assistant

You will calibrate and repair instruments and help with experiments, or support the IITM library with digitisation, news tracking, photography and video editing.

Project Assistant and Field/Laboratory Assistant

You will keep the weather sensors, towers, radars, wind profilers, lidars and aerosol spectrometers running, move data, fix faults and join field campaigns. The Delhi posts also handle PM samplers, ceilometers and aethalometers across the NCR.

Service Conditions and Caveats

• Tenure: Most posts run up to 31 March 2027 or till the project ends, whichever is earlier. The COPE, Alwar and RSPCB posts start with one year. Extension depends on your performance.
• Transfer liability: The place of posting can be anywhere in India and is transferable.
• Nationality: Only Indian nationals can apply.
• Cut-off date: Your interview date is the cut-off for age, qualification and experience.
• Higher pay with national exams: The higher Project Associate rate applies only if you hold NET, CSIR-UGC, GATE or have passed a national-level exam run by a central government body.
• Number of posts: The vacancies may change with project needs, and the Director can relax desirable qualifications for exceptional candidates.
• Joining: You may have to join immediately once found medically fit, and the contract can be ended with one month's notice.
• Travel: No TA/DA is paid for attending; SC/ST candidates get admissible TA/DA as per Government of India orders.

Application Submission Notes

There is no online form. Each post has its own walk-in day, and you must reach the venue between 9:00 and 10:00 am — anyone arriving after 10 am is turned away. Bring the filled-in application proforma (posted next to the advertisement on the IITM Careers page), your original certificates and one photocopy of each.

• Pune and Chennai posts: IITM, Dr. Homi Bhabha Road, between NCL and ARDE, Pashan, Pune 411008
• Guwahati posts: ST Radar Facility, Gauhati University, Jalukbari, Guwahati 781014
• Delhi posts: IITM New Delhi Branch, Prof. Ramnath Vij Marg, New Rajinder Nagar, New Delhi 110060
• Tezpur post: Tezpur University, Assam
• Bhopal posts: IITM Bhopal, Old IMD Building, 9 Jail Road, Arera Hills, Bhopal 462011

• Operate, calibrate and maintain weather, aerosol, cloud and lightning instruments
• Collect, quality-check and analyse data from field and lab instruments
• Take part in field campaigns and observation trips across India
• Run numerical models such as WRF-Chem for air-quality and weather forecasting
• Build and update websites and mobile apps that share weather information
• Prepare reports on the data and help with scientific publications
• Support project coordination, proposals and progress reports where assigned