The talent pool not keeping pace with increased outsourcing demand is just one reason CDMOs have trouble filling roles, according to a search expert. He also told BioSpace who is most in demand and how candidates can stand out from the competition.
Even though it’s an employer’s market, hiring isn’t easy for every biopharma company. Roles at contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMO) are becoming increasingly difficult to fill, according to Dave Bowers, managing director and global head of EPM Scientific, a life sciences search firm. A major driver, he told BioSpace, is that demand for outsourced pharma manufacturing has increased faster than the specialist talent pool.
“So, you’ve got multiple CDMOs chasing the same small group of people,” Bowers said. “And some of them, like, say, an experienced peptide process chemist, that takes seven to 12 years to develop that skill set and understanding. You can’t necessarily throw a salary at someone and magic them into existence.”
To illustrate recent CDMO growth, Bowers shared a statistic from advisory firm Vision Lifesciences. The global contract development and manufacturing organization market reached about $210 billion in 2025, up from $170 billion in 2022, according to the firm. It noted that three structural forces have driven that growth:
- Increasing outsourcing penetration, which represents about 40% of pharmaceutical manufacturing, up from around 30% in 2018
- The rising complexity of novel modalities that require specialized manufacturing expertise
- The expansion of the biologics pipeline, which accounts for about 45% of drugs in clinical development
As to future growth, Bowers highlighted a finding from market research company Data Insights Market. It projected the global pharmaceutical CDMO and contract manufacturing services market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 8.2% from 2025 to 2034.
Another factor that makes filling roles challenging for CDMOs, according to Bowers, is that hiring managers are extremely selective—sometimes too selective.
“Hiring teams have this idea of a perfect candidate, and that needs to have a modality, a scale, a region, and the issue is that person doesn’t necessarily exist,” he said. “And if they do exist, they’re not available, or they’re not willing to relocate. So, the challenge is the search stalls in the pursuit of an on-paper perfect candidate, and the real-time cost to that organization is the time that that seat goes where it’s unfilled.”
EPM Scientific has found it can take at least 50% longer to fill CDMO jobs than typical life sciences roles, according to Bowers. He noted that larger organizations usually have longer recruitment processes and procedures and may have candidates participate in multiple-stage interviews. Leaner companies in a more focused operating environment move more quickly, Bowers added.
Two recent developments could help not only employers make hires but also job seekers get hired. First, Bowers said EPM Scientific is seeing CDMO clients soften on the absolute need for certain skill sets and almost refusal to consider adjacent skills. Second, he noted that they’re being more flexible about whether candidates have management and leadership exposure.
Regarding the latter, Bowers said, “So, there will be a nonnegotiable on technical expertise, but we are seeing organizations look at, say, talent in their early years and working with them to make that step into management more attainable and achievable by being hands-on for a period of time and then having a fast track.”
He added that EPM Scientific has seen a lot of mentorship programs at larger CDMOs to quickly get employees up to speed, especially in quality and compliance. Such career development programs are an example of how those companies are putting their people first and giving them the best possible opportunities, Bowers noted.
“Clients are talking about their purpose and their value and how they can help get candidates from A to B,” he said. “It is, for want of a better phrase, a marriage and a partnership.”
Who’s most in demand at CDMOs
As to which CDMO roles are most in demand these days, that doesn’t necessarily fit into one niche, according to Bowers.
“It’s an actual operational leader who’s technical within regulatory and quality and can kind of pull it all together,” he said. “It’s someone that can run a site, own a P&L and actually move the numbers.”
Bowers added that the technical portion of the job isn’t necessarily the hard part at the senior level.
“It’s kind of expected that with tenure and experience, you will be competent and capable,” he said. “It’s your ability to translate that into results and, most importantly, your ability to articulate those results.”
CDMOs are also looking for candidates who can communicate competently, are team players and have a project-first mindset, according to Bowers.
“It’s about getting the work done and working together to achieve a result,” he said.
How candidates can stand out the right way
To differentiate themselves from the competition, Bowers recommended that biopharma professionals hoping to get hired at CDMOs avoid mistaking resumes for tick-box exercises. He explained that what’s important is not so much what a candidate has done but what they’ve achieved. For example, rather than saying they were responsible for operational strategy, an applicant can refer to developing and executing a plan that improved EBITDA by X and on-time delivery by Y.
While EPM Scientific encourages biopharma professionals to showcase how they’ve contributed to a project and culture, people don’t always do that, Bowers noted.
“We often work with exceptional candidates who are too busy doing the work,” he said. “They’re not professional sales leaders or sales professionals. They’re executing highly complex technical strategy. They do it better than anyone else in the market. They just need at times some coaching to educate that client base on their value and their results.”
Looking at senior-level professionals specifically, there are three things that separate those who get hired at CDMOs from those who don’t, Bowers said. They position themselves as business leaders, not just site heads; they connect the decisions they’ve made to growth and efficiency; and they make their transferable skills completely explicit. They don’t, Bowers added, assume that hiring managers will join the dots for them.
“You need to be able to specifically point to a turnaround you drove and the impact, not just a list of programs,” he said.
