Inside Pharma’s IT Landscape: From AWS to Postgres

A reader emailed and asked about how the IT landscape in biotech and pharma is changing. I started collecting this data about 9 months ago, so while I don’t yet have multi-year trends, I can give a view of where the industry is investing now.

IT is a really important area, foundational to all those AI/LLM initiatives executives love to talk about at conferences. So investing in IT can be an important sign of a mature organization that may actually deliver on the AI promises. So who is hiring in IT, and what for?

Who is Building IT Teams in Biotech? ¶

1,743 IT-classified roles were posted in the past 6 months from 43 companies.

Abbott posted 480 positions, nearly double the runner up, Medtronic at 262.

Smaller computational-focused companies like Verily (Alphabet) made the top 10 list, beating out the giant AstraZeneca. Natera, the clinical genetics testing company, also had a strong showing.

IT Role Breakdown ¶

I classified IT roles based on keywords in the job title, nothing fancy. I excluded R&D focused analytics, data science, and AI/ML engineering roles, but included data engineering, DevOps, and business analytics. Lots of room to argue there, this was a first pass.

Perhaps not surprising, Software Engineering roles dominated, with nearly 3x the next highest category of Cybersecurity.

Individual contributors make up 75% of IT roles - a stark contrast to HEOR, where 91% were management positions. Companies are building teams of do-ers, not just leaders.

Amazon Web Services is the Default ¶

When looking closer at the Cloud and DevOps roles, I checked which technology was most popular. Amazon is the clear winner:

• AWS (648 mentions)
• Azure (230 mentions)
• Kubernetes (218 mentions)
• GCP (108 mentions)

AWS appears in job descriptions nearly 3x more than Microsoft’s Azure. Google Cloud trails significantly behind both in niche territory. Kubernetes is ubiquitous. It is so entrenched that it rivals cloud platforms in job requirements.

Out of curiosity I also looked for Oracle. They came up 6 times.

Long Live Postgres ¶

Which databases are most popular among database focused roles?

Postgres was the most frequently mentioned database by far, followed distantly by Amazon’s Redshift, MySQL, Cassandra, and Amazon’s DynamoDB.

More exotic databases were also mentioned, like the graph database Neo4J and vector stores like Pinecone and Milvus, but overall, classic relational databases like postgres are the workhorses of pharma and biotech.

The AI Reality Check ¶

Nearly every IT job (97%) mentioned an AI/ML keyword in the job description. The only thing I take away from that is that mentioning AI/ML has become standard practice, regardless of whether the role actually involves AI work. I did a deeper analysis of AI/ML hiring patterns in Q1 - email me if you’d like that report.

The focus on AWS, robust databases, and individual contributor roles suggests companies are building foundational infrastructure and teams in IT. Smart approach.

I track IT-focused jobs on PharmaPayWatch if you’re job searching.

Let me know what you want to explore next - I read all the emails!

Data from PharmaPayWatch.com | US jobs only | Questions? Reply to this email or reach out to [email protected]