Your placement is agreed, the company wants something useful out of it, and your dissertation is meant to happen alongside. Most students work out in month two that a master's dissertation is not a thing you fit around a job.
You write a master's dissertation at a company by checking the credit value in your programme handbook first, converting those credits into hours, agreeing in writing which internal data you get, and confirming that your university, not the firm, appoints the examiners who mark it. We show you the arithmetic most guides skip.
📌 Key points at a glance
- One UK credit represents 10 notional learning hours, says the QAA.
- A taught master's carries a typical minimum of 180 credits, or 1,800 hours.
- A research project is frequently a third of the course.
- Student visa holders may work 20 hours weekly in term time.
- UCL requires full, independent second-marking of every dissertation.
Create a survey for free
With empirio.ai you can create a modern online survey in minutes — with hosting in the EU.
- AI-built survey
- Adjust by drag & drop
- Real-time analysis
A dissertation at a company or at your university: the honest trade-off
A company-based master's dissertation earns its place when your question needs data the university cannot give you, and when you accept that a second organisation now holds a view on your topic. Your university leaves you freer on the question and leaves the data collection entirely to you.
British universities call a taught master's project a dissertation and keep the word thesis for doctoral work, so a course handbook, a job advert and a UK repository can all describe the same piece of writing with different labels. American usage runs the other way round. Whichever word your handbook uses is the word for your paperwork.
| Criterion | At a company | At your university |
|---|---|---|
| Topic | set by an operational problem | set within your supervisor's field |
| Data | internal, and only as promised | you source all of it yourself |
| Supervision | two contacts with two aims | one academic supervisor |
| Time | shared with a placement or job | all of it yours |
| Publication | may need an embargo | normally unrestricted |
Topic and publication stay negotiable until you sign. Data access does not, once your question stops working without internal figures; time is fixed by the credit value and the submission window in your programme handbook; and supervision is settled by your department and the examination board rather than by the firm. Approval, the written agreement and the embargo work the same way at every level, and the overview of a dissertation written at a company covers that ground. Undergraduates hit a different first problem, finding a firm that will take them at all, which the guide to a bachelor's dissertation at a company deals with.
What a master's dissertation costs you in hours: the credit arithmetic
A UK master's dissertation is measured in credits, and credits convert straight into hours. Under the QAA Higher Education Credit Framework for England, one credit typically represents 10 notional hours of learning, which is why the same document describes a 20-credit module as 200 hours.
A taught master's in England, Wales and Northern Ireland carries a typical minimum of 180 credits, at least 150 of them at FHEQ Level 7. Multiply that by 10 and the whole degree comes to 1,800 notional hours. Your dissertation is a defined slice of that total, and the handbook names the size of the slice.
The QAA Master's Degree Characteristics Statement notes that at least a third of a specialised or advanced study master's is frequently given over to a research project leading to a dissertation, and that an MRes commonly devotes at least half. A third of 180 credits is 60 credits, and 60 credits converts to 600 notional hours.
The arithmetic in one line
60 credits multiplied by 10 hours gives 600 hours. A dissertation period running from the end of taught teaching to a September submission is roughly 15 weeks, so 600 hours works out at about 40 hours a week. Your count starts the day the taught modules stop, not in August.
Work out your own figure before you sign anything. Take the credit value of the dissertation module from your programme handbook, multiply it by 10, and divide by the number of weeks your department allows. Whatever comes out is the number every job offer has to fit around.
Working alongside your dissertation: the hours that actually exist
In UK employment law a student who takes a job is simply a worker. The same contract types, the same National Insurance thresholds and the same minimum wage rules apply as they would to anyone else on the payroll, and being enrolled on a master's changes none of that. Two limits do bite while you are writing, and only one of them applies to everyone.
The Student visa cap: 20 hours in term time
International students face a hard immigration ceiling on paid hours. Paragraph ST 26.1 of the Immigration Rules Appendix Student permits 20 hours a week during term time for a full-time course at degree level or above sponsored by a higher education provider with a track record of compliance, with full-time work allowed outside term time. Courses under degree level are capped at 10 hours a week.
Hold both numbers side by side now. A 60-credit dissertation across 15 weeks asks for roughly 40 hours a week, and 20 hours of paid work brings the total to 60. Company-based dissertations come apart at this line far more often than they come apart on the topic.
Three things can still be fixed, and the time to fix them is before you sign anything. The first is the hours themselves: ask for a written variation to your contract that drops you to one or two days a week from the point the taught modules finish until the submission deadline printed in your programme handbook. The second is what those hours are for: get your line manager and HR to state in writing that a named share of your paid time is fieldwork and analysis for the dissertation, not work loaded on top of it. The third is when the work happens: ask your programme director to confirm the dissertation window in writing, then keep the heaviest weeks clear of exams, resits and any other summative assessment.
Check which weeks count as term time
Appendix Student sets the 20-hour cap during term time and allows full-time work outside it, and the rule itself does not tell you which weeks your own course treats as term time. A summer dissertation period is not automatically a vacation for immigration purposes, and breaching a work condition puts your permission to stay at risk. Get the dates confirmed in writing by your international student adviser before you accept extra shifts.
Pay: the floor, and the placement exception
Pay has a legal floor and one exception that lands directly on students. From April 2026 the National Living Wage is 12.71 pounds an hour for workers aged 21 and over, with 10.85 pounds for 18 to 20 year olds and 8 pounds for under-18s and apprentices.
GOV.UK lists higher and further education students on work experience or a work placement of up to one year among the people not entitled to the minimum wage. A placement forming part of your degree can therefore be unpaid entirely lawfully, and whether you are owed the minimum wage turns on your employment status rather than on the job title in the advert. Settle that question before you settle the topic.
Who may supervise your dissertation and who may mark it
Your university marks your dissertation, and only people it has formally appointed may do so. Your workplace contact supervises you in the everyday sense, supplies data and opens doors inside the business, and plays no part in the mark.
Assessment regulations spell this out institution by institution. The UCL Academic Manual requires markers to be formally appointed as Internal Examiners or Assistant Internal Examiners by the Board of Examiners, and it places every dissertation and research project under full, independent second-marking.
Your academic supervisor may well be one of those markers, and UCL allows it on one condition: where the supervisor marks the dissertation, the work must go through full, independent and anonymous second-marking. Closeness to your project is not a reason to keep the standard process at arm's length.
Feedback from a marker is not your result. UCL states that a mark given before second marking is indicative and stays subject to internal moderation and to ratification by the Board of Examiners and the External Examiner, who comes from another institution. Your classification is settled at the board, never in a supervision meeting.
Where the company contact fits
A workplace contact holds a formal role on some programmes and none at all on others, and your own assessment regulations decide which. Appointment runs through the department and the Board of Examiners either way, it takes weeks, and nobody is appointed retrospectively. Ask your module leader inside the first month who is down to mark your dissertation.
Create a survey for free
With empirio.ai you can create a modern online survey in minutes — with hosting in the EU.
- AI-built survey
- Adjust by drag & drop
- Real-time analysis
Where a company-based dissertation usually goes wrong
Company-based dissertations rarely come apart at the writing stage. They come apart in the weeks when the topic, the data access and the timetable are being fixed, and three failures account for most of the ones that end badly.
Your programme handbook and your examination board settle the credit value, the deadline and the marking, and none of that touches what a firm promises you over coffee. Sorting the three out costs an email each before you register, and weeks once fieldwork has started.
The brief arrives as an instruction
A retailer describes what it wants the way it would describe it in a team meeting: get our click and collect waiting times down. Instructions get carried out, and a carried-out instruction is not a finding. Turn the need into a research question that sits against published work, and the business still gets what it asked for, this time as evidence.
The data was promised by a person, not by the firm
Access to internal figures belongs to whoever offered it, and that person may be running a different team by March. Your submission date does not move while you hunt for a replacement source. Put the report, the reporting period and a named deputy in an email and ask for a written reply, because a confirmation you can forward outlasts both goodwill and a reorganisation.
Headcount decides your method, not the other way round
A survey run inside one employer stops at the payroll, and a team of 18 people will not support a design built on group comparisons. Work out the sample size your analysis needs before you commit to the analysis. Fieldwork inside a business also runs slower than a survey for a bachelor's or master's dissertation recruited in the open, so the smaller your pool, the earlier the first invitation has to go out.
Pulling out of a company-based dissertation
Withdrawing from a company-based dissertation means two separate acts, and doing one does not do the other. Your contract ends on its own notice terms, and your assessment ends only when your university's regulations say it does. Resigning from the job leaves the submission deadline exactly where it was.
Your programme regulations decide whether you may withdraw from a registered dissertation at all. Extenuating circumstances procedures cover genuine disruption, the deadlines for claiming are short, and the decision rests with the examination board or a panel acting for it rather than with your supervisor.
Withdrawal is often not what the situation calls for. A collapsed data supply usually means a changed question rather than a dead project, and many programmes allow a title to be adjusted inside the submission period with the supervisor's agreement. Public data, sector statistics or a survey opened beyond the payroll can carry the same argument perfectly well.
Tell the university first
Write to your supervisor and your programme administrator the moment the company arrangement looks unlikely to hold, and do it before you raise it with the firm. That email dates the problem. Extenuating circumstances procedures run to a deadline, so the day you reported a disruption matters as much as the disruption itself.
Checklist: what has to be settled before you register
The nine points that follow belong in the weeks before you register your dissertation, not in your first week of writing. Each one has already cost somebody weeks, and each one is a single email.
Work through them in order. The first three decide whether your plan is permitted at all, and no contract is worth discussing while those three stay open.
- External project allowed? Your programme handbook says whether a dissertation may be based at an outside organisation and whether it needs approval.
- Academic supervisor secured? A supervisor has agreed to the project in writing before you sign anything with the firm.
- Credits and deadline noted? The credit value times 10, divided by your weeks, is your weekly load.
- Research question settled? The operational problem has become a question that a method can answer.
- Hours agreed? The contract states how many hours a week belong to the research itself.
- Visa conditions checked? Student visa holders have confirmed in writing which weeks count as term time.
- Data access in writing? Report, period and a named contact are all specified.
- Fieldwork signed off? Written approval from the business exists before the first invitation goes out.
- Confidentiality and publication set? What stays confidential, for how long, and what the repository receives.
Allow four to six weeks for all nine. None of them counts towards your submission period, and none moves faster because you started writing early.
Conclusion
A company-based master's dissertation comes down to three numbers: the credit value of your dissertation module, the weeks your department allows, and the hours your contract or your visa leaves free. Multiply the first by 10, divide by the second, and test the answer against the third. Students who hold written data access and know which appointed examiners will mark the work have already removed the two failure modes that matter.
What to read next
- Planning the empirical side? Empirical bachelor's or master's dissertation
- Surveying the workforce? Running an employee survey
- Need respondents beyond the payroll? Finding survey participants
- Want the method groundwork first? Empirical research
Need a workplace survey that your company approves and your examiners accept?
empirio.ai, an online survey tool from Germany, lets you create a questionnaire in a few steps, send it as a link that needs no account and follow the responses as they land.