ABSTRACT This study explores how early career academics negotiate precarity in the higher education sector in the United Kingdom under the amplified uncertainties brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our preliminary findings based on the semi-structured interviews with nine early career academics (six women and three men) shed light on varying experiences of early career academic precarity with regard to working and life routines, and their participation in the job market. We argue that early career academics’ gender, employment status, and their university affiliations influence the degree to which they are able to instrumentalise and negotiate precarity during the pandemic in the UK.