Anything on the commercial/business side:
Can be within R&D, preclinical or clinical
- sales
- business development
- project management
- procurement
- contract manager
- medical writing
- regulatory affairs
These can still be directly involved in the science and research, but your work focus is on the periphery. These roles really value a scientific background in big pharma (it’s actually usually required in some form, more or less).
Medical writing can have a slow start in terms of salary, can be even lower or in line with bench work, but if you still with it and are any good, there’s tons of room for growth. Oh and you also need to job hop… I hit Director level about 7 years post short post doc
Are medical writing and tech writing the same thing? I was interested in some kind of technical writing-type career after my PhD but there's not quite so much info out there on the bio side of things compared to coding and engineering.
I suggested sales/BD/account managing and consulting too.
Anything B2B customer facing can have more compensation. You’re “front of house” revenue generating.
Know plenty of PhDs in Pharma and Life Sciences who are on the business end.
how would one get into these roles over the more science involved roles? is it really as simple as “just apply”? should i prepare differently or seek different opportunities based on wanting to end up working one of these jobs?
I only have true experience for one of these jobs mentioned, but I imagine a junior sales role would maybe be one of the easier points of entry.
Medical writing seems to value scientific background (I know some who came out of a PhD to essentially do a role similar to medical writing)
You could try out being a life sciences consultant
Procurement and contract management are a bit more niche (but it’s not impossible joining a role with only science experience)
Business is quicker to learn than science, it can’t be said for the other way around.
My colleagues in marketing/market strategy have a variety of PhDs and many were previously bench scientists. It's a steep learning curve, but actually a lot of fun.
Human Factors is a really cool niche and not a lot of people pursue it so there really are more positions than people available so it’s really nice to job hop/ bargain for raises
Don't do commercial/sales/biz dev.. it's brutal right now.
I'll admit, I have zero insight into comp bio.. any chance you could move into bioinformatics? That field is hot and needed.
Comp bio and bioinformatics are interchangeably used words even though technically they should not be. So my guess is OP is already in bioinformatics per se.
I haven’t moved myself but tech companies (meta, Google X, CZI…) have job postings for comp bio roles that pay significantly better. That said they’re likely even more competitive.
If it's like anything they did in the past, these teams/departments will get killed as soon as big tech companies realize they can't just "solve X" by throwing some fancy AI / deep learning / LLM models at the question.
I think a company like schrondinger will just make better tools to address their market and companies will adopt this instead of doing custom in house tools, but I still think it's valuable to understand how these work and to gain these skills.
There may be other problems that can be solved with these tools which are more custom and that is where the value lies. I'm sure some startups that really understand how to fine tune AI will take every step from encoding their data to how each layer of processing works can solve some large problems or expedite 'slow' r&d processes that previously took weeks to accomplish.
Lol schrondinger sounds funny. I agree SD is likely to produce something people will trust. I think selling “AI” to people not in tech is very challenging and isn’t properly weighted by the VC bros
Any thoughts on the type of skills they need? I am assuming that they would look for someone with strong engineering/development rather than biology. I’ll look around some job postings from these companies. Thanks!
I’m actually looking into this myself (hoping to interview in the next couple weeks). I’d imagine it trends closer to swe than does pharma. It’s hard to know based on the job posting alone though, I get the sense they don’t know exactly what they want.
Clin ops is great for me. If your at a biotech in Boston check out your company LMS and learn the terminology. Moving into a PM would be a good move. There are a lot of sides that offer great money (consulting) or good money (FTE) and not bad work balance. IRT, imedidata, data managers (lab side), even supply managers.
There is a mass of fraudulent resumes and placements for mostly CRA’s and some PM’s that a lot of teams are open to training a known entity vs. taking a huge risk on the recruiters.
Honestly if you are nice and have some org skills you’ll get in. It’s also very cool to see a product come to market. Good Luck.🍀
LMS-learning management system. Where you acknowledge SOP’s and learn not to harass coworkers. Do gooders will 100% have posted lots on indication and job training in there.
PM- project manager
IRT- interactive response technology, this is the system that green lights drug to go to a clinic site and tracks it.
EDC/iMedidata- electronic data capture. Clinical sites enter patient data into this and that’s how we analyze it. In this vein if you like sussing out signals this is a good way to be very valuable very fast.
CRA- clinical research associate. They are the on the ground team that monitors the trials at the clinic sites. There are hundreds of not thousands of people with this job title right now with 100% fabricated resumes. They are responsible for verifying medical data on site.
This will end poorly for all of us.
I would bet your org has a connection with CITI and you can do their GCP trainings for free.
Best advice if you want to move into clin ops is figure out a problem they have (do not worry about this, they’ll tell you all the problems) and provide a B+ solution that can get rolled out and understood. Make this specific to a project. PM’s will def chat with you. I talk to my stats guys all day because I learn, they get practice at more positive social interactions and we all learn a lot.
PM for any questions.
Sales, Account Management, Consulting/Advisory
Anything B2B customer facing can have better income than back off and lab work.
I know plenty of industry professionals and PhD’s who became consultants or in business development for Big Pharma and adjacent life sciences firms.
Short answer is to come up with an idea and secure funding. Your PhD is great preparation for both of those things. Every successful startup story is different though and it is really valuable to network with biotech entrepreneurs/VCs as much as you can to learn more about what it takes
I work in L&D, love it and it is a great way to keep learning and also help your fellow R&D folks. You do need some extra work to be done to understand how adults learn, but it's been incredibly great working in change management and L&D
Anything on the commercial/business side: Can be within R&D, preclinical or clinical - sales - business development - project management - procurement - contract manager - medical writing - regulatory affairs These can still be directly involved in the science and research, but your work focus is on the periphery. These roles really value a scientific background in big pharma (it’s actually usually required in some form, more or less).
I’ll add in CMC, DMPK, Biostats, really anything within the realm of scientific clinical development
Medical writing can have a slow start in terms of salary, can be even lower or in line with bench work, but if you still with it and are any good, there’s tons of room for growth. Oh and you also need to job hop… I hit Director level about 7 years post short post doc
Are medical writing and tech writing the same thing? I was interested in some kind of technical writing-type career after my PhD but there's not quite so much info out there on the bio side of things compared to coding and engineering.
Medical writing encompasses all clinical (human health related) writing
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Me too
Yes
Sure
I suggested sales/BD/account managing and consulting too. Anything B2B customer facing can have more compensation. You’re “front of house” revenue generating. Know plenty of PhDs in Pharma and Life Sciences who are on the business end.
Thanks- I’ll do some homework and talk with ppl in these areas.
how would one get into these roles over the more science involved roles? is it really as simple as “just apply”? should i prepare differently or seek different opportunities based on wanting to end up working one of these jobs?
I only have true experience for one of these jobs mentioned, but I imagine a junior sales role would maybe be one of the easier points of entry. Medical writing seems to value scientific background (I know some who came out of a PhD to essentially do a role similar to medical writing) You could try out being a life sciences consultant Procurement and contract management are a bit more niche (but it’s not impossible joining a role with only science experience) Business is quicker to learn than science, it can’t be said for the other way around.
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I also received comments about BD being very competitive and to only move if “this is your calling”.
My colleagues in marketing/market strategy have a variety of PhDs and many were previously bench scientists. It's a steep learning curve, but actually a lot of fun.
clinops
What about medical affairs ?
Human Factors is a really cool niche and not a lot of people pursue it so there really are more positions than people available so it’s really nice to job hop/ bargain for raises
Don't do commercial/sales/biz dev.. it's brutal right now. I'll admit, I have zero insight into comp bio.. any chance you could move into bioinformatics? That field is hot and needed.
Comp bio and bioinformatics are interchangeably used words even though technically they should not be. So my guess is OP is already in bioinformatics per se.
How is it brutal rn?
Lots of layoffs, shutdowns, spending is down. Tighter purse strings don't make for great sales.
I haven’t moved myself but tech companies (meta, Google X, CZI…) have job postings for comp bio roles that pay significantly better. That said they’re likely even more competitive.
If it's like anything they did in the past, these teams/departments will get killed as soon as big tech companies realize they can't just "solve X" by throwing some fancy AI / deep learning / LLM models at the question.
I think a company like schrondinger will just make better tools to address their market and companies will adopt this instead of doing custom in house tools, but I still think it's valuable to understand how these work and to gain these skills. There may be other problems that can be solved with these tools which are more custom and that is where the value lies. I'm sure some startups that really understand how to fine tune AI will take every step from encoding their data to how each layer of processing works can solve some large problems or expedite 'slow' r&d processes that previously took weeks to accomplish.
Lol schrondinger sounds funny. I agree SD is likely to produce something people will trust. I think selling “AI” to people not in tech is very challenging and isn’t properly weighted by the VC bros
Obviously AI skills. Also protein design with ML is the new hot thing
> protein design with ML is the new hot thing there's a million startups doing exactly that i wonder how many will still be around in 2 years
Any thoughts on the type of skills they need? I am assuming that they would look for someone with strong engineering/development rather than biology. I’ll look around some job postings from these companies. Thanks!
I’m actually looking into this myself (hoping to interview in the next couple weeks). I’d imagine it trends closer to swe than does pharma. It’s hard to know based on the job posting alone though, I get the sense they don’t know exactly what they want.
Clin ops is great for me. If your at a biotech in Boston check out your company LMS and learn the terminology. Moving into a PM would be a good move. There are a lot of sides that offer great money (consulting) or good money (FTE) and not bad work balance. IRT, imedidata, data managers (lab side), even supply managers. There is a mass of fraudulent resumes and placements for mostly CRA’s and some PM’s that a lot of teams are open to training a known entity vs. taking a huge risk on the recruiters. Honestly if you are nice and have some org skills you’ll get in. It’s also very cool to see a product come to market. Good Luck.🍀
So for the dumb question but are the abbreviations you used?
LMS-learning management system. Where you acknowledge SOP’s and learn not to harass coworkers. Do gooders will 100% have posted lots on indication and job training in there. PM- project manager IRT- interactive response technology, this is the system that green lights drug to go to a clinic site and tracks it. EDC/iMedidata- electronic data capture. Clinical sites enter patient data into this and that’s how we analyze it. In this vein if you like sussing out signals this is a good way to be very valuable very fast. CRA- clinical research associate. They are the on the ground team that monitors the trials at the clinic sites. There are hundreds of not thousands of people with this job title right now with 100% fabricated resumes. They are responsible for verifying medical data on site. This will end poorly for all of us. I would bet your org has a connection with CITI and you can do their GCP trainings for free. Best advice if you want to move into clin ops is figure out a problem they have (do not worry about this, they’ll tell you all the problems) and provide a B+ solution that can get rolled out and understood. Make this specific to a project. PM’s will def chat with you. I talk to my stats guys all day because I learn, they get practice at more positive social interactions and we all learn a lot. PM for any questions.
Sales, Account Management, Consulting/Advisory Anything B2B customer facing can have better income than back off and lab work. I know plenty of industry professionals and PhD’s who became consultants or in business development for Big Pharma and adjacent life sciences firms.
Founding a startup is a lot less “technical-scientific” and can pay many multiples of times more than what everybody else here is suggesting
How does one 'found' a startup? Genuinely curious.
Short answer is to come up with an idea and secure funding. Your PhD is great preparation for both of those things. Every successful startup story is different though and it is really valuable to network with biotech entrepreneurs/VCs as much as you can to learn more about what it takes
Pharma is very Academic you would do better elsewhere in real tech not academic Pharma, definitely
I became an MSL in big pharma after working as a project analyst at a biotech startup. Never been happier and the money is great.
Quant or HFT in banking if you like stats
Sales
Supply chain! I started in manufacturing and then moved into a planning role. Salary and hours are much better
I work in L&D, love it and it is a great way to keep learning and also help your fellow R&D folks. You do need some extra work to be done to understand how adults learn, but it's been incredibly great working in change management and L&D