Hiring Trends and Opportunities Across Research & Development at Start-Ups, Mid-Size and Larger Organizations in the Biopharmaceutical Industry

While people tend to speak about Research & Development as if they represent an equal balance at innovative biopharmaceutical companies, reality is much more complicated. Size of the organization, stage of maturity, geographic footprint (national/regional/global) and the status of their portfolio will largely dictate how investments are being made. The web of collaborations, third party agreements and other partners that play a major part in today’s R&D landscape complicates this picture even further. A substantial portion of the R&D ecosystem lives outside the walls of the sponsoring organizations and caters to various aspects of that environment.

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Understanding these differences is important as you consider your options for new job opportunities and career advancement. It allows you to appreciate how your skills and experiences would be valued by organizations and to what extent broader advancement is a possibility in those places.

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One misperception that I frequently encounter is that an individual’s opportunities will be constrained by their technical training and work experiences. There is a kernel of truth to that statement in that you may be inclined to stay close to your training and there will be many others who would be happy for you to do so. But regardless of whether you have a bachelor’s, master’s, PharmD or Ph.D. degree, there are numerous opportunities that can take you beyond your current training. You just need motivation and the right role to get started. Chemists can become regulatory experts, biologists - project managers, engineers - clinical trial development experts. Don't limit yourself or let others limit you.

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Organizations aspire to hire a balance of experienced and less experienced individuals. Experienced individuals bring proven capability, can hit the ground running and provide mentorship for less experienced team members. Less experienced individuals are an investment for the long term and likely bring more modern training.

Circumstances can skew this balance. Advantage goes to experienced candidates when organizations are looking to rapidly expand teams in more traditional spaces (example product development). Conversely, the advantage flows to more recent graduates who bring more contemporary training in their fields (examples gene and cell therapy) as organizations look to grow in new areas.

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Ultimately, you will want to understand as to how you might fit into a team/company based on how they view their capability matrix. Stated or unstated, all groups have one. Regardless of size, all organizations divide capabilities into three categories: Strategic, Core and Foundational.

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Strategic capabilities are the basis for competitive advantage. Organizations tend to want to own these efforts as they see them as vital to their long-term success. As an example, a technology platform that is the basis for a start-up would be defined as strategic.

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Core capabilities represent important work that focuses on effectiveness but is not seen as a defensible source of advantage. Organizations make choices about what needs to be internal versus external, either in part or entirely as part of their business model. Many development and commercialization activities can fall into the Core category though larger organizations tend to want ownership, at least in part, of this work.

Foundational capabilities are required to do the business, oftentimes focusing on efficiency. They are required to maintain competitiveness but are likely outsourced. Work that is considered ‘rules based’ as opposed to ‘judgment based’ falls into this category.

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As a result of this stratification, hiring practices across organizations tend to run as follows. Strategic – must own, internally focused, Core – mixture of ownership models, can be both inside and outside and Foundational – mostly external. Knowing how companies view their capability matrices and where they are along the continuum between start-up and global player can assist you in refining your job search.

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I’ll share some general concepts here with the caveat that any broad model fails to speak to the nuance on a case-by-case basis.

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Start-up/Early-Stage Companies

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The investment strategies of start-ups and early-stage companies are focused on the core technologies that led to their founding, usually very heavily in the research space. As such, your technical skills and experiences will be most important to them, and most roles will be found in that innovation space. Expect to be hands on from day one and you are likely to find yourself with more than one role. A great learning environment but long-term career progression is not the priority.

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When their innovation is ready for development, they tend to leverage other partners. They don’t have the luxury of time or money to build it themselves. A small number of development roles will exist internally but will be mostly drawn from experienced individuals. These hires will help create the development strategy, guide work with collaboration partners and will be deeply involved in the operational details.

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The future of these organizations usually depends on 1-2 big ideas where probability of technical success, competitive pressures, and the quality (business acumen) of their leadership teams matters.

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Your best opportunities can come when your training and experiences match closely with their immediate or near-term needs. Pay close attention to key project advancements, new major collaborations, or expansion of existing ones as a sign of potential increased hiring. Similarly, failure of key programs, discontinuation or downsizing of existing collaborations likely proceed a time of downsizing or redirection of efforts.

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Understand their cash on hand and monthly burn rate as that allows you to estimate their current runway before running out of money. Publicly traded companies are required to share financial information and there are usually sources of information for pre-public entities as they are closely followed by analysts. Companies can (and do) raise more money but these are usually predicated on certain data inflections. Understand the baseline before jumping into the pool.

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Growing but Still Midsize Companies

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Companies in this space are those organizations that have evolved beyond their early start-up origins or perhaps more established players who have yet to move beyond a certain scale. They tend to reflect a balance of R&D investment depending on the stage and breadth of their innovation. Their development investments will still trend towards the use of third parties, but their aspirations will be to build capabilities, at least in part, within their own walls.

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Much of their innovation will still come from their internal team but they will increasingly look to leverage outside innovation as well. As a result, they need well trained individuals who can create, evaluate, and integrate new opportunities regardless of source.

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Potentially they have achieved a degree of commercial success and are looking to expand their investments accordingly. There will be a better balance of opportunities, the possibility of positive cash flow and some degree of potential career growth as well. Success of portfolio programs could signal a trend towards increased hiring in the development and commercialization spaces. Or even further investment in the research space to create future opportunities.

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Announcements around collaborations will still be significant as this is an external validation signal from third parties on their level of confidence in the technology. Equal attention should be paid to the sponsor’s breadth of portfolio and how well it is advancing. Strong data brings acceleration and increased focus. Technical issues drive the reverse.

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As projects move into the mid-phase of clinical development, organizations are already laying plans for success and movement into pivotal clinical trials. Similarly, regulatory submissions to government authorities for approvals will see a ramp up in commercialization activities intended to support those products through their launch and beyond. Observing and anticipating these inflection points can be helpful in the job hunt.

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There is an increasing trend towards acquisition of these emerging players by cash rich but perhaps innovation lean major players. From a career perspective, employees of the acquired company will need to consider the potential upside of broader opportunity long term in the bigger organization that could be offset by limited interest in being part of that new team.

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Large Companies

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Perhaps the most heterogeneous collection of organizations in terms of their operational models though they tend to have many similarities. They focus on global reach, have multiple business lines, numerous commercial products, and significant history. Their cash flow over time lets them make large multi-year investments and their significant working capital allows them to acquire innovation and other capabilities at a scale that smaller organizations cannot match. Keep in mind, size does not equate to success. Size can bring the creation of silos, bureaucracy and slow decision making.

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At one level, these companies offer the most numerous job opportunities and considerable flexibility for career growth. The complexity of their operating models, oftentimes a function of their history, makes taking a singular approach to job hunting across the industry somewhat of a non-starter. Furthermore, the competition for those roles is intense and tends to attract experienced talent across research, development, manufacturing, and commercialization spaces.

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These companies tend to have sizable research organizations, but much of their focus (and resources) will be on development and commercialization of their pipelines. It is common to see three quarters or more of their R&D spend focused on those later stages. As a result, the bulk of opportunity will lie in that post research space.

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Many of these players rely heavily on external innovation to fund their pipelines. While they have internal research organizations, how they leverage those teams in the context of that externally sourced innovation could be different than those organizations where much of their innovation is home grown. Movement in and out of therapeutic areas may be more common and R&D sites can expand or contract in the face of a dynamic and externally sourced pipeline. The research and development pipelines may look a bit mismatched based on long term investment strategy and opportunistic plays. ?

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At the other end of the spectrum are those organizations where most of their innovation comes from internal sources, and external innovation is used to supplement or complement their internal pipeline. These companies tend to be highly strategic in their areas of research focus and demonstrate longer term commitment to same. Their research and development portfolios tend to align more closely with one another given the internal progression of projects.

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Regardless of the innovation model, all organizations follow science and opportunity. A promising development pipeline brings further investment in that space but might begin to erode investment on the research side of the house. Similarly, an aging commercial product line or anemic development portfolio will likely increase the level of investment in discovery/ early-stage programs.

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These swings in investment will mostly be driven by inorganic (collaborations, acquisitions and leveraging partners) as opposed to organic growth via new hiring. But in many cases, a degree of internal hiring accompanies those efforts and that can be the basis for opportunity as well.

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Next Steps

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The biopharmaceutical business is cyclical and your study of organizations across their research, development and commercial pipelines can give you useful clues on what areas might have the most opportunities. In turn, this analysis will also inform you on potential future growth, bottlenecks or stopping points.

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Build your network and leverage sources of information (informational interviews, career fairs, virtual hiring seminars) and do your own diligence. No one person or one source of information has the answer. Understand your options and look for the paths that could work best for you.

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Don’t overlook the significant opportunities that lie beyond the innovator organizations across biotech and pharma. These roles can offer valuable experience and may become your future path.

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Be confident that at the end of the day, it will work out. The current hiring environment is very tough, especially for individuals looking to get their first job out of school. Persistence and resilience are essential. Whether it takes a few tries or hundreds of attempts to land that role, keep pushing forward.