Large pharma spent 2025 cutting jobs and still cannot fill the senior roles it needs most.
Almost all those cuts landed in commercial and support functions. The vacancies that will not close are in regulatory affairs, quality, technical operations and CMC, the chemistry and manufacturing work that sits behind a filing.
Regulatory affairs shows the problem most clearly. The experience that qualifies someone at that level gets created one filing at a time.
Europe is tighter again, because a Qualified Person for Pharmacovigilance or an advanced therapy lead must be credible in a particular national system as well as in the science.
Below is what we are seeing in the market right now, what clients are telling us, and how to run a search when the pool is this thin.
roles cut across 17 large pharma companies during 2025
estimated patent cliff running to 2030
ceiling on US tariffs for imported patented medicines
Sources: Fierce Pharma, March 2026; Section 232 proclamation, April 2026.
Why is demand rising while pharma headcount falls?
The work that generates regulatory submissions is expanding at the same time as commercial teams are being cut. Fierce Pharma reported in March 2026 that 17 large pharmaceutical companies, each with at least $20 billion in 2025 revenue, reduced their workforces by more than 22,000 people during that year, driven by an estimated $300 billion patent cliff running to 2030.
Competitors respond to each expiry with biosimilar and generic filings, and every one of those filings needs a regulatory owner inside the company making it.
In America a Section 232 proclamation in April 2026 imposed tariffs of up to 100% on imported patented medicines and their active ingredients, with relief for companies committing to domestic production. Companies have been negotiating approved onshoring plans to secure the lower rate.
At the same time the senior end of the pool is shrinking for reasons that have nothing to do with tariffs or patents, because the generation that accumulated this experience first is now retiring. What they know about a particular agency, product, or site goes with them. This is known as the wisdom gap and we wrote further about this topic here.
Why is Europe tighter than the US at senior level?
Every company marketing a medicine in the EU must have exactly one named Qualified Person for Pharmacovigilance, resident in the EU, permanently available, and recorded by name in the marketing authorisation dossier.
That single-name requirement is the whole constraint. You cannot cover the role by adding headcount, a change of holder must be reported to the authorities, and whoever takes it must be credible in the national system they are operating in as well as in the science.
Pay is rarely what decides these appointments. Raising the offer does not make a candidate credible to an agency they have never dealt with, and it does not make a cross-border move work for their family.
What are hiring committees screening for, and how do you keep the brief realistic?
Committees want one thing: a named regulatory outcome the candidate personally owned.
- A first-in-class BLA or NDA approval.
- A biosimilar cleared in two regions.
- An inspection closed with no findings.
Each is reasonable on its own. Ask for all three, then add a therapeutic area and a commutable postcode, and the brief describes maybe a handful of people in the world. That happens because every stakeholder adds the criterion that reassures them, and nobody adds up the total.
So have the conversation before sourcing starts. Ask each stakeholder to mark every criterion essential or preferred on their own, then keep only what everyone marked essential. The list usually halves.
Talk to us before the search starts
If there is a senior pharma hire you are quietly worried about, book a conversation with us. We run these searches across Life Sciences and Process Industries, and the conversation usually starts with the brief rather than the shortlist.
How should you run a search when the pool is this thin?
Sometimes the answer is being more flexible on something the brief has treated as fixed.
the candidate pool at their second site
VP of Quality, three North American sites
We ran a VP of Quality search recently for a manufacturer with three North American sites, covering manufacturing process quality and product quality across all of them. The client wanted the person based at one particular site. Very few suitable people lived within reach of it, while their second largest site sat in a considerably deeper pool with 4 times the candidates.
We put the two pools side by side and showed them what each location would realistically produce, in volume and in the calibre of the profiles using the information we had gathered. They agreed the role could be based at the second site, the shortlist came together quickly after that, and the role was filled.
That decision came from data we collated; this is part of our market mapping that we carry out as part of every search. We need to know the market in detail so we can advise our clients the best move forward. It’s what you should expect from a hiring partner.
We found many clients lacked crucial information like this about their sector and talent pool. They would come to us looking for guidance, this is why we built a standalone new service called Hiring Intelligence. This is a custom-built report, specific to the role you’re looking to hire, your company, sector and 50+ verified sources.
Once you can see what the market pays, how big the pool really is, where that talent sits and who it currently works for, you can adjust the brief and make the hire you have spent the last four months struggling to fill.
What does this mean for your next senior hire?
The pattern across all of this is the same. Demand for filings is rising while headcount falls, the qualifying experience sits with a small and shrinking group of people, and the job spec that reaches the market is usually the sum of everyone’s reassurances rather than a description of a real candidate.
So, the work that decides these searches happens before sourcing does. Read your own brief back and mark which criteria you would still defend nine months in. Whatever survives that test is the search, the rest is negotiable, and it is cheaper to say so now.
Solutions Driven can help earlier than people expect, and often before a search starts at all. The question we can answer is whether the brief in front of you is hireable: how many people hold that experience, where they are, and what would move them. If the brief needs to change, we would rather say so now than four months in.
Pharma hiring FAQs
Which pharma functions are hardest to hire into right now?
Regulatory affairs, CMC and process development, quality, and clinical operations leadership. In each of them the pool grows only as fast as projects complete, so it cannot be accelerated by training or graduate hiring.
Is the pharma patent cliff making regulatory hiring harder or easier?
Harder, despite the redundancy headlines. The 22,000 roles cut across large pharma in 2025 were concentrated in commercial and support functions, while the expiries themselves generate biosimilar and generic submissions that need regulatory ownership. The people released by restructuring generally sit a level or two below the roles that are hard to fill.
Does US reshoring change where we should be hiring?
For site-based functions, yes. The onshoring commitments made after the April 2026 proclamation are putting plants into locations that had no pharma talent pool 18 months ago, and those plants need quality, validation, and technical operations people. So, relocation and commute assumptions are the first thing to test. Corporate and regulatory roles are less affected.
Is hiring in Europe any easier?
Not at the senior end. The single named Qualified Person for Pharmacovigilance per company means the role cannot be covered by adding headcount, and advanced therapy searches stall even where the package is competitive. National rules and language also mean a candidate who is credible in one market is not automatically credible in the next, so geography is usually harder to relax in Europe than therapeutic area.
What should we relax first if the search stalls?
Therapeutic area and geography, usually in that order, and almost never the approval experience. Regulatory pathways transfer across indications more readily than most hiring committees expect, whereas nobody acquires first-in-class filing experience on the job.