The turnover rate of academic staffs in Ethiopian universities has been increasing from time to time. High employee turnover rates were jeopardized efforts to attain organizational objectives. This research aims at examining the effect of academic employees’ job satisfaction in Dire Dawa University. The study was applied a mixed research approach via employing descriptive and explanatory research designs to quench the specific and general objectives of the study. The researcher was considered proportionate stratified random sampling technique to select 288 academic employees from the different colleges and institute of the university. Moreover, survey method through cross-sectional method of inquiry would be employed to distribute and gather structured questionnaire from respondents of the study. Both descriptive and multiple regression were employed to satisfy specific objectives of this study. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS version 20. The tests involved were ANOVA, Pearson Correlation Coefficient and Multiple Regressions. The results show job satisfaction factors such as intrinsic, extrinsic, general satisfaction and turnover intention have significantly negative relationship. These findings show that the related factors should have given attention to retain employees in the organization and understanding the nature of the issue and reasons for quitting could help in keeping expert employees and preventing them from leaving. Finally the researcher expected that different attributes of job satisfaction would potentially influence academic employees’ turnover intention in Dire Dawa University.