Biotech Employment Snapshot 2025: UK Drug Discovery and Therapeutics

Based on the UK trends and our experiences at ADLIB we have created an insight into the therapeutics and drug discovery space for 2025.

Sector Overview:

Although funding for drug discovery startups in Europe peaked in 2021 there has been some great, novel breakthroughs within the drug discovery and therapeutics field in 2024 with the trend towards use of AI in drug discovery, imaging, toxicology studies and clinical protocols revolutionising drug development processes.

Although funding slowed down in 2024 with the lowest number of Seed funding biotech’s in Europe being funded since 2019 this is anticipated to increase again in 2025 with the focus on AI and antibody drug conjugates. More government funding is expected in 2025 focused on Cambridge and London biotech clusters.

UK Locations:

Cambridge remains to the leading biotech hub in Europe.

London and Oxford make up the second and third largest biotech hubs in the UK.

Also, notable cities hosting biotech clusters are Edinburgh, Leeds, Glasgow and Manchester

Drug Discovery and Therapeutics Skills in Demand:

• Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
• Fermentation – Upstream and Downstream Processing
• Genomics – CRISPR and Gene Editing
• Immunotherapeutics
• Oncology and Tumour Microenvironment Research
• Synthetic Biology

Why work in Drug Discovery and Therapeutics:

Positive Impact– you can make a difference to health outcomes of countless patients globally.

Career Growth – there are lots of jobs, and once you build up a skillset you can follow a path to promotions and lots of specialist roles.

Variety – often roles in the drug discovery and therapeutics sectors offer varied daily tasks with multiple projects running simultaneously avoiding repetitive tasks.

Diversity – each biotech company requires a range of skills and talent – scientists, engineers, data scientists, software teams, leadership, project managers etc – so teams are diverse.

2025 – What is to come:

We anticipate that the top talent with skills in antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), gene therapy, and personalized medicine/precision medicine will remain in high demand with companies in this space receiving the bulk of VC investment. Those candidates in non-lab-based roles, such as R&D PMs, Bioinformaticians and Computational Biologist will likely continue to be able to work remote or hybrid as more and more biotech companies embrace the hybrid working structure.

The move towards AI and ML use within drug development and clinical trials is also likely to continue into 2025 optimising drug screening methods and making precision medicine more accessible. Alongside this, lab automation will likely also become more of a focus improving researcher efficiency, speed, and productivity.

Along with many other industries the larger companies are now also focusing somewhat on sustainable practices in the drug development process, reducing waste and minimising overall carbon footprint. The focus will move to limit hazardous material use, extend lab item life cycle where possible and improve energy efficiency in the lab environment where possible.

Conclusion:

It is a great time to be involved in the drug discovery and therapeutics space. Hopefully we will see an increase in hiring at both the start-up level and larger corporate level in 2025.