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Biotech professionals may be having an easier time getting research and development (R&D) roles, based onBioSpacedata and a recent CBRE report.
Biotech R&D job postings live on theBioSpacewebsite 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 sciencesreportfrom 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 smaller-cap biotechs, starting in 2024, said Matt Gardner, head of life sciences, Americas, at CBRE. For example, he toldBioSpace, 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 calendar 2025, you’d find a few industries very prominent, and biotech is definitely one of them,” Gardner said. “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 said, is it makes it easier 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 got very constrained and led to obviously more drastically conservative decision-making and scenario building between those smaller 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 toBioSpacetallies. While only eight companies went public in 2025,seven did soin Q1 of this year.
Regarding the current biotech R&D job market, Gardner said it’s linked to the funding environment and noted improvement not only in IPOs but also in mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Based onBioSpacereporting, during the first quarter, biopharmas spent roughly$46.8 billionacross 19 acquisitions, including Gilead’s$7.8 billion dealto 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 need to pay out the prior fund and set up new fund formation as a strategy going forward,” Gardner said.
While he noted that additional exit activity is needed for new funds to take their next steps, he was nevertheless positive about how the funding environment is affecting biotech professionals’ chances of getting hired.
“If you are in the R&D market today, you’re probably getting into your next opportunity much more quickly than you were a couple of years ago,” Gardner said.
For those looking for biotech R&D roles, there are nearly 400job postings liveonBioSpacenow. Hiring companies include:
AbbVie: nearly 70 positions across California, Illinois, Massachusetts, 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, Massachusetts, 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 Massachusetts and Poland
Regeneron: nearly 60 positions across Ireland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York
Sanofi: about a dozen roles in Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania
Takeda: over a dozen jobs in Massachusetts
United States Pharmacopeia: over a dozen positions across India, Maryland and New Hampshire
Additional companies hiring for biotech R&D jobs includeAvidity Biosciences,BioMarin,CSL,Dyne Therapeutics,Formation Bio,InVitro Cell Research,Legend Biotech,SyngeneandTris Pharma.
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