Big Pharma Hiring Report: September 2026
Big pharma's job openings held flat in September: the 44 largest drugmakers posted 14,861 jobs in the roles we track and took down 14,832.
19,093open roles tracked across 44 companies
8,492of them in the US (44%)
14,861new postings in September
About even14,861 posted, 14,832 taken down
Key findings
- New postings ran at about 3,500 a week and about as many came down, so the number of open roles barely moved.
- Sales shrank most: 2,424 postings opened and 2,636 closed, a net drop of 212. Biostatistics and data science grew most, with a net gain of 35.
- Boston and Massachusetts have 1,167 open roles across 32 companies, ahead of New Jersey (752), the Chicago area (708, almost all AbbVie) and the Bay Area (523).
- Merck, Novo Nordisk and Moderna added roles fastest, by 17–28% of their open roles. Perrigo, GSK and STADA cut fastest, with net closures equal to 20–28% of their open roles.
- Half of US roles now post a salary. The median posted midpoint is $180,500, rising from $96,000 for associates to $329,000 for vice presidents.
Opened and closed in September
Job postings opened and closed across all 44 companies, September 1–30, 2026. New postings averaged about 3,500 a week.
Where the US jobs are
Open roles by metro area, with the three largest employers in each.
Chicago's total is almost entirely AbbVie (650 of 708 roles). Boston has the widest spread of employers.
Who is adding jobs and who is cutting
Net change in postings in September (opened minus closed), as a share of each company's open roles. Companies with at least 100 open roles.
| Adding roles | Open | Net | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Merck | 339 | +94 | +27.7% |
| Novo Nordisk | 375 | +98 | +26.1% |
| Moderna | 259 | +44 | +17.0% |
| Johnson & Johnson | 1,318 | +204 | +15.5% |
| Gilead Sciences | 382 | +48 | +12.6% |
| Vertex Pharmaceuticals | 249 | +31 | +12.4% |
| Cutting roles | Open | Net | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Perrigo | 104 | −29 | −27.9% |
| GSK | 552 | −117 | −21.2% |
| STADA Arzneimittel | 156 | −31 | −19.9% |
| Novartis | 718 | −111 | −15.5% |
| Regeneron | 535 | −73 | −13.6% |
| Otsuka | 154 | −21 | −13.6% |
Most new postings
| Company | New postings (September) | Open now |
|---|---|---|
| Johnson & Johnson | 1,973 | 1,318 |
| AbbVie | 1,267 | 1,941 |
| Roche | 938 | 1,168 |
| AstraZeneca | 867 | 770 |
| Amgen | 804 | 1,599 |
| Merck | 665 | 339 |
| Novartis | 655 | 718 |
| Pfizer | 615 | 569 |
| Sanofi | 615 | 791 |
Jobs by function
Open roles worldwide and in the US, with postings opened and closed in September.
| Function | Open | US | Opened | Closed | Net |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sales | 3,027 | 1,608 | 2,424 | 2,636 | −212 |
| Manufacturing & CMC | 2,392 | 1,177 | 1,807 | 1,800 | +7 |
| Medical Affairs | 1,120 | 506 | 857 | 930 | −73 |
| Information Technology | 1,105 | 300 | 583 | 676 | −93 |
| Quality | 958 | 318 | 875 | 915 | −40 |
| Clinical Development | 837 | 477 | 581 | 594 | −13 |
| Marketing | 833 | 382 | 744 | 726 | +18 |
| Drug Discovery & Preclinical | 418 | 318 | 343 | 318 | +25 |
| Regulatory Affairs | 406 | 168 | 290 | 289 | +1 |
| Data & Digital | 249 | 88 | 172 | 188 | −16 |
| Biostatistics & Data Science | 242 | 160 | 185 | 150 | +35 |
| Market Access | 222 | 91 | 186 | 211 | −25 |
6,522 open roles (34%) don't map to a single function yet and are left out of this table.
US pay
4,519 of 8,492 US roles (53%) post an annual salary range. The median midpoint is $180,500; the middle half of roles sit between $140,000 and $218,200.
By seniority
By function
| Function | Median | Middle half | Postings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Medical Affairs | $232,750 | $186,375–$278,850 | 288 |
| Clinical Development | $224,445 | $173,338–$299,750 | 312 |
| Marketing | $206,900 | $180,500–$235,852 | 242 |
| Market Access | $205,000 | $186,375–$229,000 | 54 |
| Regulatory Affairs | $203,500 | $168,875–$260,662 | 124 |
| Data & Digital | $198,000 | $169,300–$244,150 | 73 |
| Drug Discovery & Preclinical | $197,375 | $159,125–$231,225 | 142 |
| Information Technology | $190,050 | $156,662–$215,700 | 152 |
| Biostatistics & Data Science | $162,050 | $150,600–$205,000 | 108 |
| Quality | $153,625 | $110,225–$196,275 | 180 |
| Sales | $153,000 | $125,000–$185,000 | 786 |
| Manufacturing & CMC | $141,900 | $118,488–$180,500 | 500 |
How this report is made
- Data comes from the public careers sites of 44 large pharmaceutical companies, collected daily by biopharma-careers.com.
- Most companies' finance, HR and legal postings are not tracked, and neither are Johnson & Johnson's MedTech sales roles. At the 22 companies whose careers sites report a full job count (checked October 8), we track 8,704 of 10,155 postings (86%), ranging from 70% at Johnson & Johnson to over 95% at Pfizer, Amgen, Regeneron and Moderna.
- Totals are therefore lower than each company's full job count, and company sizes are not directly comparable. Changes over time are measured on the same set of roles every month, so trends are not affected.
- Open roles are postings live on October 13, 2026. New postings and closures cover September 1–30, 2026, and are counted on the day our daily check first or last saw a posting, usually a day after the employer's change.
- A posting counts as new only once a company has been tracked for a week, so roles already open on the first day of tracking aren't counted as new. Neurocrine, Exelixis and Sarepta (first tracked September 1) count from September 8, a few companies added in late August count from September 2, and BioMarin (first tracked September 28) isn't in September's figures.
- A posting counts as closed after it is missing from three daily checks in a row.
- Posted and taken-down totals don't cover exactly the same days for every company, because postings in a company's first week of tracking aren't counted as new. The gap is about 100 postings, larger than the 29-posting difference between the two totals, so September's net change is best read as about even. For the 31 companies tracked for the whole month, 13,774 jobs were posted and 13,610 taken down.
- Companies sometimes take down and repost the same job, which raises new postings and closures equally. In September, 5.5% of new postings (814) matched a posting from the same company, with the same title and city, taken down in the previous 30 days, or 8.8% ignoring city. The net change is the more reliable measure.
- These figures count job postings, not employees. They can't show whether a new posting replaces someone who left or adds a new role, or whether a posting came down because it was filled, cancelled or put on hold.
- Pay figures use the midpoint of each posted annual range, for US roles that publish one. Intern and fellowship roles are left out.
- Merck's careers site stopped returning its full job list between October 9 and 12. Collection was fixed on October 13, and these figures include Merck's current roles.
- This is the first edition. Month-on-month comparisons start with the October 2026 edition.
Using these numbers
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Big Pharma Hiring Report, September 2026, BioPharma Careers (https://biopharma-careers.com/reports/pharma-hiring-september-2026)
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