New Technical Recruitment Route Established
France’s Directorate General for External Security (DGSE) is creating a new recruitment route aimed at bringing highly specialized academic and technical expertise into the agency. DGSE Director-General Nicolas Lerner signed an order identifying specific fields of study that will be prioritized in this new hiring framework.
The identified disciplines include artificial intelligence, quantum physics, cybersecurity, and nuclear science. The order also specifies four foreign languages for recruitment: Turkish, Persian, Hebrew, and Korean.
This move is part of a broader overhaul of DGSE recruitment procedures. For the first time in 2027, the agency will allow candidates to recruit as attachés and specialized controllers through competitive examinations based on academic qualifications. This method replaces the reliance solely on conventional competitive examinations that have previously defined the agency’s hiring practices.
Qualifications and Authorized Positions
Under the new external qualification-based competition for the attaché corps, candidates must hold at least a Master’s degree or an engineering qualification in specified disciplines. These fields include cloud computing, cyber defense, artificial intelligence, and nuclear physics.
The DGSE has authorized 14 attaché posts for the 2027 competition. The breakdown of these positions includes four roles in geopolitics, two in administration, two in data analysis, one in geography, and one in business management.
Language-specific posts account for the remaining positions: two in Arabic, one in Russian, one in Chinese, and the four newly highlighted languages of Turkish, Persian, Hebrew, and Korean. The inclusion of these four languages does not indicate they are newly identified intelligence priorities, as the DGSE already maintains an established foreign-language recruitment and training structure.
While Hebrew was not part of the broader language list in the older competition framework, it is now specifically selected for this new specialist attaché route alongside Turkish, Persian, and Korean. Arabic, Russian, and Chinese remain part of conventional recruitment and were not dropped from the older framework.