If you’re in life sciences, you already know the drill: demand for highly specialized talent keeps rising while the actual number of qualified humans… doesn’t. And as biotech pipelines diversify, M&A heats up, and AI reshapes every corner of drug discovery, the market for machine-learning engineers, process development talent, and clinical operations pros has become one of the most brutally competitive hiring landscapes in the world.
Safeguard Global—the company that practically wrote the playbook for employer of record (EOR) services—has entered that arms race with a new data weapon: its first Industry Intelligence Report, “Top Countries for Hard-to-Fill Life Sciences Roles.” The report zeroes in on five notoriously difficult role clusters:
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Machine learning engineers & data scientists
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QA & validation engineers
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Bioprocess, process development & automation engineers
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Clinical pharmacologists & translational scientists
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Clinical project managers & operations leads
What sets this report apart isn’t just the geography—it’s the balancing act. Safeguard Global evaluated talent availability, skill depth, cost efficiency, speed to deploy, and country-by-country compliance friction. In other words, not just who has the talent, but where you can realistically hire, operate, and stay out of regulatory hot water.
And for life sciences employers trying to scale programs across borders without blowing budgets (or trial timelines), that’s a timely question.
The Bigger Picture: Pharma’s Pipeline Pressure Cooker
Safeguard Global’s analysis lands at a high-stakes moment. According to Grand View Research, the global pharma market—already worth $1.65 trillion in 2024—is expected to leap 40% to $2.35 trillion by 2030. The combination of bioplatform diversification and a feverish M&A cycle is putting extreme pressure on organizations to hire smarter and scale faster.
A recent EY analysis says nearly two-thirds of big-pharma revenue over the next few years is expected to come from dealmaking. That means rapid integration, accelerated time-to-market, and teams that can stand up programs across geographies—yesterday, if possible.
“More pharma leaders are being measured by their ability to open markets quickly, hire globally, and keep critical programs on track,” said Bjorn Reynolds, CEO of Safeguard Global. Meanwhile, CHROs and CFOs must contend with talent shortages, soaring labor costs, and compliance landmines that only get messier as companies expand their search radius.
The message: hiring borders are evaporating, but the complexity isn’t.
How the Report Works—and Why It Matters
Safeguard Global pulled insights from:
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In-country HR specialists
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Local recruiters who have filled these exact roles
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Intelligent Workforce, the company’s AI-driven workforce optimization platform
This blended intelligence surfaces talent trends that aren’t obvious from high-level labor data. In some cases, the findings cut against conventional wisdom, making the report feel less like an atlas and more like a cheat sheet for global workforce strategy.
A few standouts:
Montreal: Deep-Learning Central
A powerhouse for AI-enabled drug discovery, thanks to the world’s largest academic concentration of deep-learning researchers. (Think Mila and the ecosystem around it.)
Portugal: Quietly Building a Biotech Base
With pharma/biotech talent growing about 2.2% annually since 2017, Portugal pairs skill depth with cost efficiency—and ranks 6th globally for English proficiency.
Czech Republic: Clinical Trials Without the Drag
Average clinical-trial approvals hover at around 60 days, making it faster and cheaper for organizations needing quick starts.
Puerto Rico: US Regulatory Standards, Global Advantages
Operating under full FDA oversight, but with cost benefits and a bilingual workforce—ideal for U.S. companies wanting expansion without regulatory reinvention.
The Netherlands: Air Cargo That Beats the Cheese Trade
The country’s “closed-loop” air cargo systems now help export more medicines, vaccines, and medical devices than famous Dutch staples like cheese and flowers.
Ireland: A Biopharma Heavyweight
19 of the world’s top 20 biopharma firms operate there, and its strength in cell and gene therapies makes it a go-to hub for advanced manufacturing and research talent.
“Pharma teams across the globe are seeking to understand where to hire and what strategies best align workforce costs to revenue,” said Wanda Prewitt, COO of Safeguard Global. The report aims to push past guesswork and into actionable, market-by-market intelligence.
Talent Scarcity + Compliance Complexity = Why This Matters
In life sciences, it’s not enough to know where the talent is—you need to know whether you can hire it compliantly and cost-effectively. That’s the tension point Safeguard Global is leaning into.
A few structural realities make these roles especially painful to fill:
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AI is eating drug discovery, ramping demand for ML and data science talent far faster than universities can produce it.
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Bioprocess and automation engineers are now the backbone of cell and gene therapy programs. Scarcity here equals bottlenecks everywhere.
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Clinical operations roles require not only technical acumen but region-specific regulatory fluency.
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Translational science is ballooning thanks to platform biotech—and the people who can bridge preclinical to clinical are rare everywhere.
Recruiting locally isn’t always an option. Recruiting globally is often the only option. But that opens new layers of complexity: employment structures, taxation, IP protection, benefits alignment, and compliance with country labor codes that can be strict—and wildly different.
That’s where the employer-of-record model comes in. Safeguard Global effectively built the blueprint for enabling compliant hiring in 180+ countries, which gives the company unusual visibility into emerging talent hubs, regulatory blockers, and patterns across client searches.
What This Means for HR, TA, and Workforce Strategy Leaders
For HR and TA teams inside biotech, pharma, and CDMOs, this report validates what they’ve been feeling for the past three years: the global war for life sciences talent isn’t slowing—it’s widening. And traditional workforce planning isn’t keeping pace.
This intelligence matters because it helps organizations:
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De-risk expansion by identifying countries where hiring compliance is manageable
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Predict cost structure across markets with comparable skill sets
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Shorten time-to-hire for critical, revenue-driving roles
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Strengthen competitive positioning in AI-enabled drug development
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Build truly global teams that can support decentralized trial models and faster pipeline movement
If 2023 and 2024 were defined by cautious hiring and budget compression, then 2025 and beyond will be shaped by strategic expansion—and the need to stand up teams across borders with precision.
The Bottom Line
Safeguard Global’s first Industry Intelligence Report doesn’t just list countries—it decodes global labor dynamics at a time when talent scarcity threatens timelines, revenue targets, and entire pipelines. It’s a roadmap for HR leaders who are navigating one of the most complex hiring environments in modern history.
For life sciences companies chasing breakthroughs, speed matters. So does compliance. So does cost. This report tries to map all three onto a single, usable strategy.
And in an industry where the next bottleneck could be a single specialized hire, that’s valuable intelligence.
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