Research Personnel Support

Research Personnel Support

Supports Korean small businesses through grants to hire and retain innovation talent.

Research Personnel Support (중소기업연구인력지원) is a rolling grant programme administered by TIPA under Korea's Ministry of SMEs and Startups that provides Korean SMEs with financial assistance to build or strengthen their in-house R&D workforce throughout the calendar year. The programme addresses a persistent structural challenge for Korean SMEs — the difficulty of attracting and retaining qualified researchers — and operates through monthly application cycles rather than a single annual window. It is one of ten core programmes TIPA executes from the 2026 MSS SME R&D budget of KRW 2.2 trillion.

The programme covers three distinct use cases: recruitment support for SMEs hiring new researchers, researcher dispatch support enabling experienced researchers to be seconded into SME R&D teams from universities or research institutes, and retention support for SMEs working to keep existing R&D personnel. Each use case has its own eligibility conditions and award structure, which are published monthly in the cycle-specific announcement on the SMTECH portal (smtech.go.kr). Eligible applicants are for-profit Korean SMEs in any technology sector; non-profits, universities, research organisations, and individuals are excluded as lead applicants.

Because the programme accepts applications every month, SMEs do not need to wait for an annual deadline — they can apply in the month that aligns with their hiring or staffing plans. Applicants should download and read the current month's 공고문 from SMTECH before preparing a submission, as award amounts, documentation requirements, and any sector-specific conditions are set at the monthly cycle level rather than fixed at the programme level. TIPA processes applications through its standard SMTECH workflow, and the MSS support hotline at 1357 can direct enquiries to the correct programme team.