Shares dropped, but a 42% reduction is an amazing result. The Phase 3 trials showed a 38% reduction in the risk of cancer spread.

Making this post to follow up on my job offer post to give some clarity and transparency to the hiring process, pay, and transparency for my career arc.

First two jobs were working as an RA and SRA at two different R1 universities in CA doing wet lab research in Mol/Cell Bio. I finished my BS in Mol Bio before J1 and J2 started as an internship during my MS in Mol Bio.

J1: Pay was $50k (CA)
J2: Pay was $60k (CA)

Worked those two jobs for about 3 years total

Got a job as a Process Engineer for J3 working at a cell therapy company in technology R&D and worked there for about 2 years. Tough hours but better pay and gave me the money and motivation to go back for my PhD.

J3: Pay was $80k the first year then $90k for the last 6 months after I got promoted (CA

Then did my PhD in Chemical Eng and worked part-time as a bioinformatics senior scientist with little coding experience and didn't get a ton of diversity/exposure to it on the job (surprisingly). Spent a good amount of time doing project management. DO NOT recommend working during a PhD.

J4/5: $38k for PhD stipend plus $65k for part-time job (CA) total was around $103k

Quit the part-time job two years in and finished my PhD in a little under four years

Graduated and, after working on a bunch of ML projects and meeting local founders in my area (and applying like crazy), got a job as an ML Scientist at a tiny/new startup working on drug discovery foundation models. Learned how to do basic ML research for bio, presented at conferences, build cloud infra for customers to use our model at-scale, data engineering, and ai engineering for our AI scientist -- essentially the whole BioML tech stack.

J6: $135k plus $10k bonus and worked there for a little over a year but we didn't pay ourselves the last three months I was there. Left to take care of a family member

Spent around 3 months applying to everything under the sun. THere was a ton of BioML jobs and I spent anywhere from 6-12hrs a week during that timespan just doing interviews. Felt like a part-time job especially with prep. Really grateful for the interviews though. Got around 37 total and made it to 9 final rounds which led to 4 offers for positions spanning ML Eng, ML Researcher, Technical Product Manager, and AI Engineer. Companies ranged from top 10 pharma to frontier AI x BIO labs to smaller/mid-size biotechs.

J7: $225k plus 10% bonus ($22.5k) and equity equivalent to a few hundred thousand with a 4yr vesting schedule.

Job title is a mix of Technical Product management and ML Scientist

Glad for it to finally be over! Really excited for the new job and hope others find this info useful

I went into manufacturing as a way to get into the biotech industry and have been there for 2 years. I am now way, way past my breaking point at my horrible night-shift job. I need to leave but I apparently "don't have enough relevant experience" for QA, QC, or other lab-tech roles. I'm only applying to entry-level positions and am STILL getting rejections for not being experienced, even though I am. I'm so sick of not getting lunch breaks because the schedule is a mess and some of my coworkers are so lazy, they don't even offer to help. I need to leave, but HOW.

I'm very fortunate to currently have a job, but I pretty much hate it. I've been applying for about 18 months, and I just got rejected after a 3rd round where I spent 30+ hours preparing a case study on top of the other interview prep for the prior rounds. This is my third rejection at this stage. I'm so tired and burned out. There aren't a ton of jobs in my area (RWE), so I feel like I can't take a break from applying because these companies don't hire super often. Though I'm guessing the rest of the year won't have many relevant postings. Really hoping for better in the new year!

It’s been 5 months since I was laid off, and I’ve been consistently applying for jobs—at least 20 applications a week. I’ve had several interviews and have made it past the recruiter screening stage, only to get ghosted afterward.

I’m starting to feel a bit hopeless, but I wanted to ask: How long has it taken you to secure a new role in 2026? Doesn’t help that the holidays are coming up sigh….

Edit: Boston area

Hello all, I work at a biotech and I must admit I rarely read the entire training SOP if it does not pertain to my role/I don’t work with that department.

Does everyone/anyone really read them all?

I am years in now so they just come up with retraining and what not but during initial employment with companies it’s always an absurd amount. Just curious out there

My husband has spent 12 years at Pfizer, mostly in overseas marketing.

He is concerned about potential layoffs. We are financially OK, but I am concerned about losing healthcare coverage.

My question is, do severance packages include healthcare, and if so, for how long? I realize that cobra will be available if we need it, but due to some health issues, I’m trying to find out how long our current healthcare coverage will last in the event of a layoff

The job is an entry-level QC analyst role for a well-developed biotech company in the San Francisco Bay Area. The recruiter’s initial email had my name misspelt… Thought it was a scam, but responded anyways to see.

The initial recruiter screen was a 30 minute phone call, going over the job description that I had read and really hyping up the role. Though, credit where credit is due the recruiter was highly transparent sharing they are having trouble filling the role.

So I advanced to the supervisor screen, which was by far the least professional screen I’ve had. Overall structure was off, but again, this person wasn’t the HM but would be the person I’d be reporting to. It was quite awkward, and it was also at 8pm…

The kicker of it all is the role is a contingent worker position. $33/hr, swing shift 1pm-11:30pm, 4 day work week. Okay… sounds normal, but it’s part of manufacturing so it’s 24/7/365. No days off, no holidays. It’d be fine for FTEs because 1.5x pay, but as a contractor you don’t get that benefit. No wonder why this role can’t be filled! Although, the supervisor did share they are flexible with time off since the FTEs are more than happy to accommodate especially with that extra pay.

It might be the fact that I’m a new grad, but hearing this and the overall interview experience is such a turn off. I am desperate for work but not this desperate…

Recently accepted a job offer and am starting next week! I was lucky enough to be sitting on four job offers last week after leaving my startup job because we ran out of money and weren't paying ourselves a salary.

For background, I am a BioML Scientist/Engineer who did a wet lab PhD that I finished in 2025. Worked a part time job in bioinformatics during my first two years of PhD (not much coding/engineering work tbh) which was my only dry lab experience. The rest of my job experience pre-PhD was wet lab R&D and Tech R&D in cell and gene therapy companies.

Became really excited about the market towards the end of my PhD and just did a bunch of projects with LLMs and open-source Bio/Chem models then networked a ton.

Started my last position and just hammered out a ton of work in AI engineering for scientific agents, created a foundation model for hit discovery, and a few other projects in just over a year.

Interviewed at exactly 37 companies over 3.5 months and made it to the final round for 9. Positions ranged from ML Researcher to ML Engineer to AI Engineer and a handful of Product Engineer and Product Manager roles.

All were through applications with no warm intros. Saw that there is a ton of demand across all sizes of companies for these skills. Interviewed at top 5 pharma all the way to brand new startups.

Keep applying and hoping! I will probably make another post about compensation, interview breakdown, etc if there is interest

EDIT: forgot to mention what I am doing!

I will be a hybrid of a technical product manager and an ML scientist/engineer. Essentially talking to customers/collaborators/partners for drug discovery workflows that can be modeled by in silico protein models for protein binders, gene editing enzymes, etc. Then building and productizing it into new software

Hello! I recently did an interview for an intern position at roche and wanted to get some insight from current/past interns :) How did you like the internship? Did they create a supportive environment to grow and develop relevant skills?

I was also wondering what onboarding looks like. Do they require some sort of background check or is it more so just submitting your documents?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated! <3

I’ve been in biotech for about 7 years now and worked for some fairly sizable genetics companies. I’ve found it’s incredibly common for the systems to be very nonfunctional. Like they don’t communicate properly between each other, there are built in workarounds because components don’t work, and it seems like the teams designing these platforms don’t know how to properly leverage their features.

Is this the same across the board or are there actual companies out there that invest in workflow organization and functionality?

If you work somewhere like this, please share because I’d love an opportunity to see that!

If you work for one of these lovely companies that’s held together with duct tape and dreams, feel free to vent in the comments!

Hi everyone, longtime lurker. I recently completed my PhD and want to go into industry. My problem is I’m applying to positions on the opposite coast (located on East Coast applying to West Coast). While I’m not currently on the west coast I definitely plan to move if an opportunity comes, no problem. Is this a red flag to recruiters, the fact that I’m not “already in the area”? I’ve been told to apply 6months to a year before you finish grad school, all the way to don’t even bother applying if you can’t immediately join.

I plan to keep applying and if I don’t see any traction after a few months I plan to go for a postdoc for a bit to wait out the market and gain more skills.

I come from a family of exclusively blue collar workers so breaking into corporate America is new to me and have been asking many around me for thoughts, although those around me are in academia so doesn’t help much…TIA

Edit: applying for R&D roles and looking into smaller companies too not just the big names

I heard today that JLabs in San Diego is going to close at an event today. Anyone else have more info?

Has anyone else been having trouble with getting orders on time from Avanti research lately?

I just wanted to have experience and wanted to work under some good institutions to gain some knowledge.
I am currently in 2nd year of bachelor program of biotechnology and wanted an internship.
So please help me how can I find internship , and something which I need to learn to get a good placement

Curious how this looks from inside small companies, leaving the science itself aside.

On the application side, I mean the admin around it: getting SAM, eRA and the SBA registry sorted, collecting biosketches and letters, budgets, and hitting a deadline that doesn’t accept anything late. After the award, it’s progress reports, budget changes, milestone sign-off and keeping registrations current.

Which part ate more of your time? And did anything nearly go wrong at either stage, like a registration that lapsed right before a deadline or a report that slipped?

Full disclosure, I’m looking at building something for the admin side of federal R&D funding, so I’m trying to learn where it actually hurts first. Not selling anything here.

Preface I know to generally steer clear from reposted jobs on LinkedIn as they’re usually ghost roles or internal hires or simply lead to nothing. However, I saw this job drop and applied within the first few hours. I was super excited about this role and company, HR reached out to me about a week later and got an interview with the hiring manager. Somehow between that and my interview they had reposted the role on LinkedIn. What do you guys think? I still prepared a ton for the interview and gave it my all but couldn’t get a good read on if my responses were landing and got a vague timeline for their process. Anything helps I’m feeling so exhausted with this endless thankless journey