The Greater Boston Area, New York City Metro and San Francisco Bay Area are the top three hubs for biopharma job listings based on an analysis of more than 1,700 recent job postings.
Within these hubs, prominent job listing title examples include Vice President of Intellectual Property, Scientist (Bioassay) and Data Scientist I and Research Sciences. Overall, there was a pronounced focus on R&D roles, intellectual property management and data-driven decision-making for titles in these regions.
California had the most job postings, followed by Massachusetts and New Jersey.
Number of job listings by top metro area
- Greater Boston Area: 167 job listings
- New York City Metro: 127 job listings
- San Francisco Bay Area: 114 job listings
- Philadelphia Metro: 71 job listings
- Chicago Metro: 43 job listings
- Los Angeles Metro: 29 job listings
Our analysis of salary data revealed that the highest-paid positions are located in cities such as Rahway, New Jersey; Seattle; New York City and San Francisco. Titles such as associate vice president, head of HIV drugs and patent prosecution attorney/counsel commanded some of the highest salaries. This suggests that specialized roles in strategic locations tend to offer more competitive compensation packages.
Number of job listings by state (top 25). Data gathered from recent job listings using https://apify.com/.
With the growing trend of remote work following the pandemic, we looked at the prevalence of remote job opportunities in the pharma and biotech industries. Positions such as public health biostatistician, data scientist I, research manager and biostatistician were more likely to be offered as remote roles.
The biopharma sector has seen a significant amount of turnover in 2024 with likely 20,000 plus cuts to date. Major companies that have cut staff in 2024 include Amylyx Pharmaceuticals, Novartis, Genentech, Sanofi, Kenvue, and Bristol Myers Squibb.
A significant number of those cuts are in regions with a significant job openings as well, with Boston beating the San Francisco in terms of the latter. Both have faced significant churn to date this year.
Number of job listings by top Metro Area
One of the fastest growing segments in biopharma are data analyst and data science titles. Common job titles in this field include Data Scientist I, Research Sciences; Bioinformatics Analyst; Biostatistician; Clinical Data Manager; Health Data Analyst; Data Engineer; Statistical Programmer; and Informatics Specialist. These roles are prevalent across major metro hubs such as the Greater Boston Area, New York City Metro, and San Francisco Bay Area.
Salary ranges for these data-driven positions are competitive but not generally as lucrative as they are in tech, typically falling between $90,000 and $140,000, depending on the role and location. Notably, data-driven jobs are well-suited for remote work owing to their reliance on digital tools and data access.
Filed Under: Drug Discovery and Development
