Hi Everyone,
I am working as full time Software developer in a UK based company, the company haven't had any previous experience in sponsoring an employ for Phd, so they asked me to collect information regarding the funding, I have shown my research proposal to a couple of universities and they are willing to give me admission,

As I am working full time so I can't study full time but since this is a commercial sponsorship, so one of the supervisor told me that your company will pay 3 years wages + tuition fees to the university and then university will pay you, I have contacted the research office but they were not able to answer me.

Here is my Situation.

a) I am working full time in an UK based company,
b) Phd which I will be doing is for a business,so working+ studying as full time
c) Will the company be paying overseas fees since I am not UK/EU national,
d) and if anyone have any knowledge regarding such sponsorship.

Thank you so much for the help,
Regards

I don't know about overseas, but I'm on an ESRC CASE studentship - which is essentially a sponsored PhD where you are expected to engage in some kind of knowledge transfer, so your research impacts the organisation. I think EPSRC and NERC do them too.

My employer is kind of sponsoring me (I work in a univeristy) - they pay £1500 of the £1750 paart-time fees and give me me allowance on workload allocation for research plus time to present at conferences etc. I don't think you would be able to work full time and be a full time PhD student (unless your job was effectively to do your research) so you are looking at around 5 years for completion. Make sure that your potential supervisors are happy with your proposal - there is a tendency to accept people more readily if they are self funding (which you are). If your employers want you to do some specific research for them then you might have a supervisor from the university and from the employer - this relationship needs to be carefully balanced as the employer might want somethign more practical (more akin to a consultancy project) but the university will need to be asured of the academic (ie theoretical content). You might also want to think about questions such as handcuffing by employer (I have a PhD + 2 years handcuffing ie if I leave within 2 years of completing my PhD I have to pay back all the fees)