Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study employee engagement in higher education by examining full-time non-tenure track faculty members’ perceptions at a North East US state public university. Design/methodology/approach The authors used semi-structured face-to-face personal interviews with 11 non-tenure track full-time university faculty. Using a phenomenological approach, thematic analysis was conducted for employee interview data. The data was further refined through first and second cycle coding. The primary eight coded clusters were further reduced to three data clusters, each representing an evolving unit of meaning. Findings The analysis revealed three themes relating to how full-time non-tenure track faculty experience and understand engagement: required institutional engagement, perceived necessary engagement and relational collegial engagement. Originality/value The study adds to the limited research available on non-tenure track faculty members within higher education organization and their perceptions of engagement.