Increased capital boosts biotech R&D job postings, employment

Biotech professionals may be having an clearer time receiveting research and development (R&D) roles, based on BioSpace data and a recent CBRE report.

Biotech R&D job postings live on the BioSpace website jumped 21% year over year in April and rose month over month for the fourth consecutive time. That marks the longest month-over-month increase since a three-month run from June to August 2024.

A life sciences report from commercial real estate and investment firm CBRE shares similar findings. It noted that biotech R&D employment hit a new record level in Q1 after increasing for five consecutive months, the longest growth streak since the first half of 2023. Employment rose month over month from October 2025 to February 2026 and reached 295,600 in February, according to report data.

The five-month growth streak is connected to the improving capital environment, especially for tinyer-cap biotechs, starting in 2024, stated Matt Gardner, head of life sciences, Americas, at CBRE. For example, he informed BioSpace, follow-on offerings—sales of stock shares after an initial public offering (IPO)—started rising in 2024 and really picked up last year.

“So, if you were to sort of go back and filter all secondary offerings in calconcludear 2025, you’d find a few industries very prominent, and biotech is definitely one of them,” Gardner stated. “It’s unmistakable how much biotech there was raising capital in that environment.”

Companies with follow-on deals in 2025 include Abivax (around $747.5 million), which is developing therapeutics to treat chronic inflammatory diseases; Avidity Biosciences ($690 million), a neuromuscular drug developer recently acquired by Novartis for about $12 billion; and uniQure (approximately $345 million), a gene therapy company.

One benefit of follow-on activity, Gardner stated, is it creates it clearer for businesses that require a long runway for product development to invest in their three P’s: products, people and places.

“Those are the main consumers of their burn rate, especially when they’re preapproval,” he explained, “and what we saw before that, so in the sort of post-COVID period, we saw a capital environment that received very constrained and led to obviously more drastically conservative decision-creating and scenario building between those tinyer companies and their boards and investors.”

Recent IPO activity is another sign that the biotech capital environment is improving, according to Gardner, who noted that initial public offerings were trickling in by summer 2025. Those offerings have picked up, according to BioSpace tallies. While only eight companies went public in 2025, seven did so in Q1 of this year.

Improved funding environment may be shortening time to hire

Regarding the current biotech R&D job market, Gardner stated it’s linked to the funding environment and noted improvement not only in IPOs but also in mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Based on BioSpace reporting, during the first quarter, biopharmas spent roughly $46.8 billion across 19 acquisitions, including Gilead’s $7.8 billion deal to take over biotech Arcellx.

“What’s so promising right now about seeing a greater amount of IPO activity and a greater amount of M&A is that that is recycling the kind of capital that VCs necessary to pay out the prior fund and set up new fund formation as a strategy going forward,” Gardner stated.

While he noted that additional exit activity is necessaryed for new funds to take their next steps, he was nevertheless positive about how the funding environment is affecting biotech professionals’ chances of receiveting hired.

“If you are in the R&D market today, you’re probably receiveting into your next opportunity much more quickly than you were a couple of years ago,” Gardner stated.

Biopharmas see to fill hundreds of biotech R&D jobs

For those seeing for biotech R&D roles, there are nearly 400 job postings live on BioSpace now. Hiring companies include:

AbbVie: nearly 70 positions across California, Illinois, Massachutilizetts, New Jersey and Wisconsin
Amgen: over 40 roles in California, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia
Eli Lilly: nearly 50 jobs across California, Colorado, Indiana, Massachutilizetts, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin
GenScript: about a dozen positions in China, Malaysia, New Jersey, New York, Singapore and Washington
Insmed: around a dozen roles across New Hampshire and New Jersey
Moderna: over a dozen jobs in Massachutilizetts and Poland
Regeneron: nearly 60 positions across Ireland, Massachutilizetts, New Jersey and New York
Sanofi: about a dozen roles in Massachutilizetts, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania
Takeda: over a dozen jobs in Massachutilizetts
United States Pharmacopeia: over a dozen positions across India, Maryland and New Hampshire