The demand is high for almost every role in the C-suite as well as for Board members, particularly in those cases in which the company is seeking to diversify its Board. Functional areas that are most in demand right now are regulatory affairs, data sciences, clinical development, and business development. Business development executives are very much in demand, including Chief Business Officers and VPs of Business Development. There are very practical reasons for this. Biotech and other life sciences companies understand that their runway to get a product to market is a long one. It takes years to move a therapeutic product through the development and clinical trial stages to commercialization, so companies with proprietary technologies look to business development executives to monetize these technologies through partnerships while the company is advancing its own therapeutic assets.

Because the road to commercialization is such a laborious and expensive process, many companies are leveraging their highly sophisticated drug discovery platforms as revenue generators, allowing other companies to use them to test their drug discoveries. These platforms are often AI or genetically driven, so they can move the drug discovery process along much faster. The company with the platform can still develop its discoveries while generating income to help pay for that development and support the other activities the company is involved in while preserving precious VC dollars. Companies are seeking these types of strategic partnerships and the executives who can make them happen.