The biotech hiring landscape has changed

If your hiring playbook still looks the way it did in 2022, it needs a rethink.

The past few years have been turbulent for life sciences. A wave of redundancies across large pharma and some well-funded biotechs has put experienced people back into the market, which sounds like good news. In some ways it is. But the picture is more complicated than a simple surplus of talent.

Candidates who have been through layoffs are cautious. They are asking harder questions about runway, leadership stability, and culture before they commit. At the same time, competition for people with specific technical skills, particularly in cell and gene therapy, computational biology, and regulatory affairs, remains genuinely fierce. Supply has not caught up with demand in those areas, and it probably will not for several years.

The result is a split market. For some roles, you will have plenty of applicants. For others, you will be competing hard for a small pool of people who know exactly what they are worth.

Where competition is sharpest

It helps to be clear-eyed about which roles are genuinely hard to fill right now, so you can plan accordingly.

The areas where scaling biotechs consistently struggle include:

  • Regulatory affairs specialists, especially those with EU MDR or IVD experience and a track record of successful submissions
  • Clinical operations leads who can manage CRO relationships and keep trials moving under pressure
  • Bioinformaticians and data scientists with domain-specific life sciences experience, not just general data skills
  • Quality assurance managers who understand both the science and the systems, particularly for companies approaching their first inspection
  • Medical affairs professionals with the rare combination of scientific credibility and commercial awareness

For these roles, passive waiting is not a strategy. The people you want are often not actively looking, and when they do move, they tend to move quickly and to organisations that have already built a relationship with them.

What candidates are actually looking for

Understanding what motivates people to move, and what puts them off, is one of the most useful things a growing biotech can do.

In conversations across the sector, a few themes come up consistently. People want to see genuine scientific ambition, a clear sense of where the company is going and why the work matters. They want leadership they can trust, which means founders and executives who are straightforward about challenges as well as opportunities. And they want to know that the organisation is set up to support them, not just to extract from them.

Compensation still matters, of course. Equity packages are scrutinised more carefully than they used to be, partly because people have seen options become worthless in companies that looked promising. Being transparent about your cap table, your vesting terms, and what the equity could realistically be worth is not a weakness. It is a signal of honesty that good candidates appreciate.

Flexibility is now a baseline expectation rather than a perk in most functions, though there is genuine variation by role. Lab-based scientists understand the constraints. Commercial and operational people tend to expect more flexibility, and your offer needs to reflect that.

How scaling biotechs win

The biotechs that hire well in this environment are not necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets. They are the ones that treat hiring as a strategic activity rather than a reactive one.

Here is what that looks like in practice:

Start before you need to. The best hires rarely happen quickly. Building relationships with people six to twelve months before a role opens gives you a warmer pipeline and reduces the pressure of a rushed search.

Be specific about what you need. A vague job description attracts a vague pool of applicants. The more precisely you can articulate what success looks like in the first twelve months, the easier it is for the right person to recognise themselves in the role.

Move at pace once you find the right person. Long interview processes with unclear timelines are one of the most common reasons candidates drop out or accept another offer. If you know what you are looking for, design a process that respects people's time and reaches a decision within a few weeks.

Treat every candidate as a future colleague or advocate. People talk. A candidate who has a poor experience will tell others. A candidate who has a good experience, even if they do not get the role, may refer someone who is perfect for it.

Invest in your employer story. This does not mean a glossy careers page. It means being able to articulate clearly and honestly what it is like to work at your company, what you are trying to achieve, and why someone talented should want to be part of it. Founders are often the best people to tell this story, and they underestimate how much it matters.

Getting the fundamentals right

It is also worth stepping back to check that your foundations are solid. Compensation benchmarking, clear levelling, and a consistent approach to offers prevent the kind of internal inequities that create retention problems later. Hiring well and then losing people within eighteen months because of pay gaps or unclear progression is an expensive cycle to get into.

Onboarding is another area that scaling companies often underinvest in. A thoughtful first ninety days, with clear goals, regular check-ins, and genuine integration into the team, makes a meaningful difference to whether someone stays and thrives.

How Sajawo can help

At Sajawo, we work with growing life sciences companies on the people challenges that come with scaling: building hiring processes that actually work, advising on compensation and structure, and helping founders think clearly about the talent decisions that will shape their next phase.

If your biotech hiring is feeling harder than it should, or if you are planning ahead for a significant growth period, we are happy to have a straightforward conversation about what good looks like for your situation.