Changing Employer on a Sponsored Visa Without Restarting Your Residency Clock

Changing employer on a sponsored work visa is usually allowed, and it almost always requires a new permission before you start. Three separate questions decide whether the move is safe, and people collapse them into one. The first is whether you may legally begin work for the new employer, and on what date. The second is whether that employer must hold sponsor status of its own and issue you a fresh certificate, nomination or permit naming the new role. The third is whether the months or years you have already served still count toward permanent residency or settlement after you move.

Those answers can point in different directions. In the United Kingdom, as published in Home Office Skilled Worker guidance, a new employer must hold a valid sponsor licence and assign a new Certificate of Sponsorship, you generally apply to change employment and wait for a decision before starting, and your qualifying time toward settlement continues to accrue across the change provided permission stays continuous. In Australia, as published by the Department of Home Affairs, an employer-sponsored temporary visa needs a fresh nomination by an approved sponsor, and the separate clock feeding the employer-nominated permanent stream generally restarts with the new employer. Same event, opposite consequences.

This article is general information for skilled workers weighing a competing offer. Every figure below is a dated planning figure to reconfirm on the issuing authority's own page, and a licensed or registered adviser should confirm your own case before you resign from anything.

The three questions, kept apart

Write these down as three separate lines before you answer the recruiter.

One: may you work? This is a question about your permission. A signed contract has no bearing on it. A sponsored visa authorises work for a named employer in a named role. Once your employment with the sponsor ends, or the role changes materially, the authorisation may no longer cover what you are doing. Some systems give a defined grace period in which you may work for others. Others give no work rights at all between employers, only a period in which to apply or leave.

Two: must the new employer be a sponsor? Employer-tied routes require the employer to hold approved status with the immigration authority and to issue a document naming you and the job: a Certificate of Sponsorship in the UK, a nomination in Australia, an employer-specific work permit backed by a labour market assessment or an exemption in Canada, an Accredited Employer Work Visa job token in New Zealand, an employment permit in Ireland. A company that has never sponsored anyone cannot simply hire you next Monday, whatever the hiring manager believes.

Three: does your served time still count? Two clocks usually run, and they behave differently. A residence clock counts lawful time in the country toward settlement or citizenship and is generally indifferent to which employer paid you, provided permission was continuous and the route qualifies. An employer-linked clock counts time worked for one sponsor in one nominated role toward a permanent employer-nominated visa, and that is the clock a move can reset to zero. Losing the second while keeping the first is common, and it is the most expensive thing people fail to check.

Who this applies to

• Skilled Worker and Health and Care Worker visa holders in the UK with an offer from a different company.
• Holders of Canadian employer-specific work permits, which name one employer, one job and often one location.
• Australian subclass 482 and similar employer-sponsored temporary visa holders, including those partway through the work period feeding the employer-nominated permanent stream.
• New Zealand Accredited Employer Work Visa holders, whose visa is tied to one accredited employer, role and region.
• EU Blue Card and national work permit holders in Germany, where a change of employer inside an early window commonly needs the immigration office's agreement, and employment permit holders in Ireland, where the permit names the employer and the occupation.
• Gulf work permit holders, where the permit sits with the employer and the exit is governed by labour law as much as immigration law.

Anyone on an open permission, for example a partner visa with full work rights, a post-study open work permit, or permanent residence, is outside this problem. Check which you hold before you assume you are trapped.

What you need before you start

Gather these before you tell anyone you are leaving.

• Your current visa grant letter and its conditions. The conditions attached to the grant are the operative statement of what you are permitted to do. A vignette or a card carries dates and little else.
• The exact occupation code your current role was sponsored under: the Standard Occupational Classification code on a UK Certificate of Sponsorship, the NOC code and TEER category on a Canadian offer or labour market assessment, the occupation on an Australian nomination, the occupation classification code recorded on a New Zealand job check.
• Your current sponsored salary and contracted hours, including whether allowances were counted toward the threshold.
• Written confirmation that the new employer holds sponsor status, checked by you against the public register.
• The dates: your start date with the current sponsor, your permission's expiry, and any date your permanent-route eligibility matures.
• A record of absences from the country, because settlement routes usually cap days spent outside.

Does the new employer need to be a licensed sponsor?

Yes on every employer-tied route here, and the check takes five minutes.

In the UK, licensed sponsors appear on the Home Office register of licensed sponsors, which is published and searchable. Our guide to reading the UK sponsor licence register walks through the traps: trading names that differ from the registered entity, group companies where only one subsidiary holds the licence, and the rating column. If the company is not on the register, your offer is not a sponsored offer yet, whatever the contract says.

In Canada, the equivalent is a per-hire authorisation. Most employer-specific work permits rest on a positive Labour Market Impact Assessment issued by Employment and Social Development Canada, or an LMIA-exempt offer of employment submitted through IRCC's employer portal with the compliance fee paid. Our explainer on what the employer actually has to do for an LMIA or sponsorship sets out the work that falls on the company, which employers underestimate when they promise a quick start.

In Australia, the new employer must be an approved sponsor and must lodge a nomination for your role. In New Zealand, the employer must hold accreditation with Immigration New Zealand and pass a job check, which our Accredited Employer Work Visa guide covers in sequence. In Ireland, the employment permit is issued to employer and employee jointly for a named occupation.

The practical consequence: if the new employer has never sponsored, your timeline is theirs. Licence and accreditation applications take weeks to months and can be refused. Ask for evidence of existing status before you resign, and if they are starting from zero, our guide to persuading an employer who has never sponsored explains what to put in front of them. While you are still applying, the portal question about whether you require sponsorship needs the same care, and our guide to answering the sponsorship question truthfully without ending the application sets out what to say in each format it appears in.

May you keep working during the change?

Systems diverge most sharply here, and a wrong assumption creates unlawful work, which is far worse than a delayed start.

Every row describes a category. Your own case is governed by your own grant and the current published guidance. Confirm each on the issuing authority's own page before you act: the Home Office and UKVI, IRCC and Employment and Social Development Canada, the Department of Home Affairs, Immigration New Zealand, your local Ausländerbehörde and BAMF, and, for Ireland, the government department that issues employment permits alongside the department responsible for immigration permission. Department names change, so navigate from gov.ie rather than from a bookmark.

Three rules survive the variation. Resignation dates and visa dates are different objects, and only the visa date protects you. A period in which you may remain in the country is separate from a period in which you may work. And where a system does let you start on submission of an application, that permission is narrow and conditional, so read the condition, save a copy, and keep the receipt.

The occupation code and salary traps

Two technical conditions break more moves than sponsor status does, and both are invisible in a job description.

The occupation code. Sponsored routes attach your permission to a classified occupation, and eligibility, salary floors and permanent-route access all follow that classification. A title that sounds like a promotion can fall under a different code, and the new code may sit outside the eligible list, carry a higher salary floor, or fail to qualify for the permanent route you were counting on. Canada shows why this matters. As published by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, the Express Entry programmes count skilled work experience in the higher TEER categories of the National Occupational Classification, so a move into a role classified below that band can add months of work that do nothing for your points. Confirm the categories that count for your intended programme on IRCC's own page, because the classification and the eligible bands have been revised before. If your occupation is marginal, read our piece on what happens when your occupation is not on the skilled list before you accept.

The salary floor. Employer-tied routes set a minimum salary, usually the higher of a general threshold and an occupation-specific going rate, sometimes discounted for new entrants or shortage occupations. Published thresholds are revised often. Treat any figure in your head as out of date and confirm the current one for your specific code on the issuing authority's page before you negotiate. Three details cost people offers: whether allowances, bonuses and overtime count toward the threshold (often they do not), whether the figure is pro-rated for contracted hours (a part-time role at a compliant hourly rate can still fail), and whether a discount you currently benefit from survives a change of employer.

Ask for the occupation code and the sponsored salary in writing before you resign. A hiring manager who cannot produce them has not yet spoken to whoever runs sponsorship compliance in their company. Korea runs the same design under different labels, where an E-7 grant names one company and one approved occupation code, and our guide to converting a Korean E-7 into the points-scored F-2-7 residence visa covers how holders get out of the tie for good.

Before you build a plan around any single offer, check that the route you would be moving onto is viable for a profile like yours. Our free quiz takes your occupation, your qualifications, your salary and the time you have already served, and returns the routes that genuinely fit, including whether the permanent route you are counting on is reachable from the new job as well as the old one. If the honest answer is that the move costs you two years of accrued eligibility for a modest raise, it is better to learn that while you can still say no.

Probation, promotions and the changes you did not think were changes

The moves that go wrong are often the ones nobody classified as a move.

Probation. A new sponsored job normally comes with a probation period, and dismissal during probation ends the sponsorship your permission depends on, after you have already given up a permission that was working. Before you resign, establish the new employer's probation terms, the notice period inside probation, and what your position would be if the role ended in month three. In systems with a defined post-cessation window, that window is your only cushion, and it is often shorter than a job search.

Internal promotion and restructures. Changing role inside the same sponsor can be a reportable change, and where the new role sits under a different occupation code or crosses a salary threshold it can require a new certificate or nomination even though the employer has not changed. Ask your employer's sponsorship contact to confirm which category applies, in writing, before the change takes effect.

Acquisitions and transfers. If your employer is bought, or your team transfers to another legal entity, the entity that sponsors you may change even though your desk does not. Sponsor licences generally do not transfer freely, and the acquiring entity may need to take on sponsorship or apply for its own status within a reporting deadline. Employees find this out late because HR treats it as payroll.

Location, hours and contracting. Some permissions name a work location or region, so moving offices or shifting to remote work can breach a condition nobody reads after grant. Converting to contracting or self-employment usually ends employer-tied permission entirely, because the route requires a genuine employment relationship with the sponsor.

If your employment ends before the new arrangement is in place, this becomes a curtailment problem with a hard deadline, covered in what happens when a sponsor loses its licence or pulls the offer. Read that the day anything looks unstable.

What it costs

Costs sit in two piles: what the employer pays and what you pay. Who pays which is negotiable, and on some routes certain costs are legally the employer's and cannot be passed to you.

• Sponsorship and certificate fees, paid by the employer for the certificate, nomination, job check or compliance charge.
• Skills or training levies, charged to sponsoring employers on several routes and generally not recoverable from the worker.
• The visa or permit application fee, per applicant, including dependants who must be moved onto the new permission.
• Health surcharges or mandatory insurance, per person and often per year of permission granted, which makes the length of the new grant a real cost variable.
• Your own costs: police certificates, medicals if they have expired, certified translations, courier fees, biometrics appointments, and optional priority processing.

Every one is a published figure that changes on the authority's own schedule. Get the current numbers from the issuing authority before you negotiate, and get the split written into the offer letter. Our guide to who pays the visa fees in a relocation package sets out what is normal to ask for and what is normally the employer's obligation anyway.

One warning belongs here. Paying an employer, a recruiter or a middleman for a job offer, a certificate of sponsorship, a nomination or an LMIA is unlawful in several of these systems and is a common fraud, covered in paying for a job offer or an LMIA is a crime. Refuse the pattern: an upfront fee for the offer itself, payment into a personal bank account, a guarantee of approval, a clause making you repay the employer's own sponsorship costs, or pressure to resign before any document exists. Verify the employer against the public sponsor or accreditation register, and verify any adviser against the relevant national regulator. At the time of writing those are the Immigration Advice Authority for the United Kingdom, the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants for Canada, the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority for Australia, and the Immigration Advisers Authority for New Zealand. Regulators are occasionally renamed or merged, so search the government site for the current body before you trust a register.

How long it takes

Plan in three phases and add contingency to each.

Phase one, the employer's paperwork. If the new employer already holds sponsor status, issuing a certificate or lodging a nomination can take days to a few weeks. If they need status first, or a labour market test or job check, this phase dominates and runs to weeks or months. A Canadian Labour Market Impact Assessment involves advertising requirements before the application is even filed.

Phase two, your application. Published processing times vary by country, route and whether you pay for priority service. Check the authority's own processing-time tool the week you file, because these figures move.

Phase three, the start date. Your legal start date is set by the grant. Agree a start date expressed as a number of days after the new permission is granted, and put it in the contract that way. That single sentence removes the pressure that causes people to start early.

When this does not work

Some moves should not happen.

• The new employer has no sponsor status and no appetite to get it. Enthusiasm is not a licence.
• Your permanent-route eligibility matures within months on your current employer's clock, and the new role restarts it. Price the delay in years before you price the raise.
• The new occupation code is outside the eligible list, or sits below the skill level your permanent route counts, or the salary fails the current threshold for that code after pro-rating for hours.
• You would have to stop working, with no permitted gap, and you cannot fund an unpaid interval of unknown length.
• Your permission has less time left than the process needs, which turns a job change into an extension plus a change, with more failure points.

If two or more are true, the better move is often to stay, reach the maturity date on the current clock, and change employer from settled or permanent status where none of this applies. Our comparison of permanent residency and citizenship explains what each status frees you from.

Common mistakes

1. Resigning before the new permission exists. The most expensive error here. Notice periods are not visa processing times.
2. Assuming the recruiter checked the sponsorship. Check the public register yourself, on the exact legal entity named in the contract.
3. Treating a permitted stay as permitted work. Separate rights, often with separate end dates.
4. Forgetting the dependants. Partner and child permissions are usually tied to yours and may need their own applications and fees at the same time.
5. Ignoring the occupation code, or counting allowances toward a salary threshold that measures base salary only. A better title under a worse code can cost you the permanent route.
6. Assuming both clocks behave the same way. Residence time and employer-nominated work time are different, and only one is usually indifferent to who employs you.
7. Letting absences accumulate unchecked. Settlement and citizenship routes cap days spent outside the country, and a job change often comes with a long trip home that nobody counts. Before a long trip or an overseas posting, check how your destination measures the day count behind its residency obligation.
8. Relying on an unregulated adviser. Check the regulator's register, and read how to check a migration agent is licensed before you pay anyone.

What to do next

Run this sequence before you answer the offer.

1. Read your own visa conditions and write down the occupation code, the sponsored salary, the grant date and the expiry date.
2. Identify which clocks you are on and the date each matures. Ask your current employer's sponsorship contact to confirm the date on any employer-nominated pathway they have promised.
3. Verify the new employer's sponsor status on the public register, matching the legal entity named in the contract.
4. Get the new role's occupation code and sponsored salary in writing, then check the code against the current eligible list and the salary against the current threshold on the authority's page.
5. Confirm whether you may work during the change from published guidance, and save the page.
6. Price the fees and agree the split in writing, including dependants, and tie the start date to the grant.
7. Have a licensed or registered adviser confirm the specifics before you resign, particularly if a permanent route is in play.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I change jobs on a sponsored work visa without leaving the country?

On most of the routes covered here, yes. Employer-tied systems generally provide an in-country application to change employer or to be granted a new permit, so you apply from where you are while it is decided, usually on condition that you hold valid permission when you apply. Confirm the in-country route exists for your specific visa on the issuing authority's page, because a route that requires you to apply from outside changes the whole plan.

Will changing employer reset my clock toward permanent residency?

It depends which clock. Residence-based settlement and citizenship generally count lawful time in the country and do not care which employer paid you, provided permission remains continuous and on a qualifying route. Employer-nominated permanent routes count time worked for one sponsor in one nominated role, and a change of employer generally restarts that count. Australia's temporary residence transition stream is the clearest example of the second type. Establish which type your intended route is before you decide.

Can I start the new job as soon as I sign the contract?

No, unless the authority has published a process that expressly permits it and you have met its conditions. Signing a contract creates an employment obligation and nothing else. Your right to work for the new employer begins on the date the new permission says it does. Where a system allows work on submission of an application, that permission is narrow and conditional, so read the condition and keep the receipt.

What happens if my new employer's sponsorship application is refused?

You remain on your existing permission if you have not yet resigned, which is the strongest argument for not resigning early. If you have already left the old job, your position depends on whether your permission was curtailed and how much of any grace period remains. Plan for that scenario in advance instead of discovering it.

Does a promotion with the same employer need a new certificate or nomination?

Sometimes. A pay rise inside the same occupation code is usually a reportable change. A move into a different occupation code, a change of duties that alters the classification, or a change crossing a salary threshold can require a new certificate, nomination or permit even though the company is the same. Ask your employer's sponsorship compliance contact to confirm in writing which category applies before the effective date.

How long can I be between jobs on a sponsored visa?

There is usually a defined period, and it varies by country. Some systems curtail your permission and give you a fixed window counted from the date of a letter. Australia publishes a cessation period during which limited work is permitted, with a per-cessation limit and a cumulative cap across the visa. Others give no work rights at all once employment ends. Do not rely on a number you read anywhere, including here: read the authority's current guidance and, in systems that write to you, your own letter, which governs your case.

Do my family's visas change when I change employer?

Usually they must be handled alongside yours. Dependant permissions are generally tied to the main applicant's, so a new permission for you frequently means applications, fees and health charges for each family member at the same time. Build them into the budget and the timeline from the start, and check whether your partner's work rights change with the new grant using our guide on whether a spouse can work on a dependant visa.

The bottom line

Answer the three questions separately, in writing, before you answer the recruiter. May you work, and from what date. Must the employer hold sponsor status, and does it. Does your served time survive the move, on both clocks. A move that passes all three is usually straightforward. A move that fails the third quietly costs years, and the bill does not arrive until the day you would otherwise have applied.

Take the free quiz and it will match your occupation, your salary, your permission and the time you have already served against the routes that fit, and show you whether the permanent route you are counting on survives a change of employer. If it does not, we would rather tell you now, while the old job is still yours. If you want the sequence written out afterwards, naming the register to check, the code to confirm and the threshold to test, NextMigrate's personal migration roadmap is $499, down from $999, started with a $99 deposit with the balance settled afterwards. Whatever you decide, have a licensed or registered adviser confirm your own case before you hand in notice.