AbbVie Posted September 30, 2026

Future Opportunities, Join our talent community for Sr Scientist II/Principal Scientist in Bioprocess Engineering

North Chicago, IL Full-time
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AbbVie is the source of truth for this posting and owns the application process. We surface normalized context and market comparison you won't find on the original listing.

About this opportunity

Company Description

AbbVie's mission is to discover and deliver innovative medicines and solutions that solve serious health issues today and address the medical challenges of tomorrow. We strive to have a remarkable impact on people's lives across several key therapeutic areas – immunology, oncology, neuroscience, and eye care – and products and services in our Allergan Aesthetics portfolio. For more information about AbbVie, please visit us at www.abbvie.com. Follow @abbvie on X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and Tik Tok.

Job Description

Process Engineering, a part of AbbVie R&D’s Development Sciences organization, is responsible for designing and developing scalable processes to make drug substances and drug products, including small molecules and antibody drug conjugates (ADCs), throughout pre-clinical and clinical development stages. Process Engineering also partners with Biologics CMC (Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Controls) Development and Aesthetics R&D functions to provide active engineering support to enable robust process scale-up and manufacturing of biologics drug substances and drug products including toxins and cosmetic active ingredients (CAIs). We contribute to the development of innovative engineering technologies and create valuable intellectual property through the composition of matter, chemical processes, and technologies resulting in cost-effective commercial manufacturing processes. We support the development of the supply chain for pipeline molecules and help prepare and defend CMC regulatory content.

Chemical/Bio Engineers within Process Engineering support pipeline projects through all phases of development. Early in development, engineers focus on establishing an enabling process that can be scaled-up successfully. In the later stages of development, engineers optimize the drug substance and drug product processes and lead manufacturing campaigns. Engineers also work cross-functionally to transfer the optimized process to manufacturing sites, develop control strategy, and prepare reports to support regulatory filings.

Role Overview

The successful candidate will play a key role in the BioProcess Engineering (BPE) Center, a part of the Process Engineering function. The core deliverable of BPE is to develop robust manufacturing processes and advance innovative technologies using strong engineering fundamentals.  The ideal candidate will have prior biologics and/or ADC development experience and a passion for hands-on laboratory process development.  Roles and responsibilities will be commensurate with experience and may range from an individual contributor collaborating on project teams to a cross-functional team leader who establishes strategy for process design.  The candidate is also expected to lead the identification and development of novel approaches and technologies to enhance process development efficiency and commercialization. The candidate must exhibit a collaborative nature in identifying process challenges on a wide range of projects, take part in a cross-functional team to deliver specific project needs, and take on a leadership role in developing and implementing solutions.

Key Responsibilities:

Participate in and/or lead process development for bioprocesses including: Develop robust manufacturing processes, supporting assets through all phases of development.

Establish, communicate, and execute research plans to develop and characterize new assets.

Develop commercial ready manufacturing processes in the laboratory and demonstrate the processes in the pilot plant.

Set project strategies, define project responsibilities and timelines, and provide leadership in a matrixed team setting.

Address challenging problems with biochemical reactions, separations, and/or isolations using expertise in reaction kinetics, transport phenomena, and mathematical modeling.

Author and/or review technical documents summarizing process development efforts and contribute to regulatory filings.

Exhibit a collaborative nature in identifying process challenges on a wide range of projects and communicate findings and recommendations effectively by multi-disciplinary interactions with organic chemists, analytical chemists, process development engineers, pilot plant engineers, drug product development scientists, program managers, and regulatory affairs specialists.

Author publications and present at scientific conferences.

Qualifications

Qualifications:

BS, MS, or PhD in Chemical/Bio Engineering or a related field and 12+ (BS), 10+ (MS), or 4+ (PhD) years of relevant industrial experience.

Ph.D. candidates with pertinent research exposure are also encouraged to apply.

Job level will be commensurate with academic and/or industrial work experience.

Candidates are expected to have a strong background in chemical engineering and the proven ability to demonstrate their skills in this field.

The candidate is expected to demonstrate the ability to solve difficult technical problems and champion new technologies to achieve project goals.

The candidate is required to be a strong team player and demonstrate scientific leadership, possessing effective oral and written communication skills for facilitating collaborations and leading cross-functional process development teams.

Preferred:

Biologics process development experience, particularly in bioconjugation, antibody drug conjugate process development, and/or purification of proteins, such as preparatory chromatography and tangential flow filtration.

Working knowledge of analytical techniques such as UV/Vis, HPLC, FTIR, Raman, and microscopy.

Experience with laboratory experimentation and process scale-up.

Experience with mechanistic and/or process modeling or computational fluid dynamics.

Experience with design of experiments and statistical tools.

Familiarity with operation of chemical/biochemical process equipment and systems.

Experience with control strategy development, risk assessments, and tech transfer.

Experience with GxP compliance and potent compound handling.

Experience with leading cross-functional pharmaceutical development teams.

Key Leadership Competencies:

Comfortable with multi-disciplinary interactions. Builds strong relationships with peers and cross-functionally with partners outside of team to enable higher performance.

Learns fast, grasps the “essence”, and can change course quickly where indicated.

Raises the bar and is never satisfied with the status quo.

Creates a learning environment, open to suggestions and experimentation for improvement.

Embraces the ideas of others, nurtures innovation and enables innovation to reality.

Additional Information

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

AbbVie is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to operating with integrity, driving innovation, transforming lives and serving our community.  Equal Opportunity Employer/Veterans/Disabled.

US & Puerto Rico only - to learn more, visit  https://www.abbvie.com/join-us/equal-employment-opportunity-employer.html

US & Puerto Rico applicants seeking a reasonable accommodation, click here to learn more:

https://www.abbvie.com/join-us/reasonable-accommodations.html

Job details

Seniority
Principal
Function
Manufacturing & CMC
Therapeutic area
Not listed
Location
North Chicago, IL
Employment type
Full-time

How this role compares

Computed from every other active Manufacturing & CMC role in our database, not just this employer's listings.

We currently track 634 comparable Principal Manufacturing & CMC roles across 88 biopharma companies.

634Comparable roles tracked
588Currently active
88Companies hiring similar roles
29Countries represented

Salary context

229 of 634 peers report a salary range (USD, annualized)

Peers share this role's job function and a matching or adjacent seniority level -- not necessarily the same therapeutic area or country.

This roleSubject Not listed on this posting
Lowest disclosed · Senior Technician Calibration - Maintenance · Mylan Technologies, Inc. $37,000/yr – $80,000/yr
Peer group range $58,500 – $288,000 (median $150,000)

Where these roles are based

Top locations among the 634 comparable roles

United States413
India45
Ireland30
Netherlands16
Germany15
China13

+ 23 more countries

Seniority mix

634 of 634 peers have a known seniority level

Senior403
Principal125
Director106

Therapeutic area mix

6 of 634 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden

Vaccines & Infectious Disease3
Dermatology & Aesthetics1
Respiratory1
Oncology1

Similar opportunities

The closest matches from our peer group, ranked by how similar they are, not how well you'd qualify for them -- treat this as market context, not a guaranteed shortlist; a weak match is labeled as one below.

60%similar
Merck West Point, Pennsylvania, United States of America Principal
Same function Same seniority Same country
60%similar
Sanofi US Services Inc. Waltham, United States Principal
Same function Same seniority Same country
60%similar
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc (USA) Tarrytown, United States Principal
Same function Same seniority Same country
60%similar
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc (USA) Renss, United States Principal
Same function Same seniority Same country
60%similar
Lilly Indianapolis, Indiana, United States of America Principal
Same function Same seniority Same country
60%similar
Lilly Lebanon, Indiana, United States of America Principal
Same function Same seniority Same country

Notify me about similar jobs

Get an email when we spot other openings like this one – same job function, comparable seniority, roles you'd actually want to see.

Or follow a whole field: get every new Manufacturing & CMC job in the United States, and choose locations and companies.

How we calculate "similar"

No black box, no LLM guesswork: a deterministic score built from four normalized attributes. Here's this role's own peer group at different match levels, so you can see the mechanism, not just the result.

Every comparison starts from the same 100-point budget: 25 for working in the same function, 40 for the same therapeutic area, 20 for the same or adjacent seniority, 15 for the same country. A dimension we can't confirm on both sides contributes nothing, never a guess, never a free pass.

60%
Associate Principal Scientist/Engineer, Medical Device and Combination Products, Analytical
Merck · West Point, Pennsylvania, United States of America · Principal
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
60%
Principal Project Engineer
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc (USA) · Renss, United States · Principal
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
60%
Automation Engineering, Sr. Principal Engineer – Pharmaceutical Manufacturing - Lilly Medicine Foundry
Lilly · Lebanon, Indiana, United States of America · Principal
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
60%
Principal Engineer I, Process Development
AbbVie · North Chicago, IL · Principal
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
Unmatched or unknown dimensions score exactly the same: 0 points, never a partial guess. A role we know almost nothing about beyond its function bottoms out at 25%; it never inflates to 100% just because there's little to compare against. Seniority uses a defined ladder (Associate → Manager → Associate Director → Senior → Principal → Director → Senior Director → Executive/VP) so "Director" and "Senior Director" count as adjacent, but "Director" and "Executive/VP" do not.