Xcout IntelWhere Big Pharma is hiring
Where a drug maker advertises jobs shows where it is building: new sites, trials, launches and shared-service hubs show up in hiring before they show up in a report. This tracker reads every open job on the careers sites of 20 of the largest drug makers, counted once per requisition, by the country it is in. The United States holds 48% of the openings whose country is known; the rest are spread across 82 other countries.
Where the jobs are
Share of open postings whose country is known (17,011 of 17,519). 403 postings (2.3%) name a place we could not tie to a country and 105 are remote with no country; they are left out of the shares.
United States48% · 8,115
China9.0% · 1,529
India8.6% · 1,463
Japan3.3% · 559
Germany3.1% · 526
United Kingdom2.3% · 396
Poland2.1% · 349
France1.8% · 312
Ireland1.8% · 309
Spain1.7% · 296
Switzerland1.6% · 272
Canada1.3% · 223
Netherlands1.2% · 203
Singapore1.1% · 195
Malaysia1.0% · 17268 more countries hold the other 12% (2,092 postings).
By region
The same postings grouped by region. The five largest countries stand alone; Europe includes Turkey and Russia.
United States48% · 8,115China9.0% · 1,529India8.6% · 1,463Japan3.3% · 559Canada1.3% · 223Who is hiring most
Open postings per company. Each bar is as long as the company’s open postings and split by the country they are in: its three largest countries, then all others.
- United States
- China
- India
- Japan
- A European country
- Another country
- All other countries
HQ United States · Innovative Medicine and MedTech; one careers siteUnited States 785China 214Japan 140Other countries 773
HQ Switzerland · Includes Genentech (wholly owned), which runs its own careers siteUnited States 313China 270Spain 118Other countries 719
HQ United States · Known as MSD outside the US and Canada; not Merck KGaAUnited States 362China 105Netherlands 62Other countries 411
HQ Switzerland · The acquired-entities careers site repeats Novartis postings and is left outUnited States 218India 128
Slovenia 65Other countries 305
Belgium 32
HQ Germany · Includes Crop Science and Consumer Health; one careers siteUnited States 301Germany 111India 33Other countries 177
HQ United StatesUnited States 424Ireland 21United Kingdom 21Other countries 80
HQ Israel
Croatia 24
HQ United StatesUnited States 270United Kingdom 15Germany 2Other countries 7
Not yet covered (we do not read their careers sites yet, so they are absent rather than zero): Novo Nordisk, Boehringer Ingelheim, Merck KGaA.
For subscribers: what each company’s hiring signals
Signed-in subscribers see each company’s full hiring footprint by country and site, the locations it has started hiring in, and its hiring momentum against its peers, with the postings behind every signal and a link to the company’s Intel profile. Updated daily. Open the signals →
A breakdown by kind of work (clinical research, regulatory, quality, manufacturing, medical affairs and more) joins this report once the job-family classification of these postings is complete.
Week by week
The trend starts 16 October 2026, the first weekly snapshot. Open postings cannot be reconstructed for an earlier date, and most of these careers sites were added to our sync in the week before, so there is no honest earlier history to show. A new point is added every Monday.
How these numbers are built
What is counted
- Postings on each company’s own careers site, read daily from its applicant-tracking system. Job boards, recruiters and search results are not used.
- A posting is open if the careers site still listed it in the last five days.
- Each requisition counts once: a posting listed again for a second location keeps the same requisition number and is not counted twice.
- “Posted in the last 7 days” uses the date the careers site gives, for postings we first read within 31 days of it.
Which companies
- Johnson & Johnson, Takeda, Amgen, Roche, AbbVie, AstraZeneca, Sanofi, Merck & Co. (MSD), Novartis, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, GSK, Bayer, Regeneron, Pfizer, Gilead Sciences, Teva, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Biogen, Moderna.
- Roche includes Genentech. Johnson & Johnson includes MedTech and Bayer includes Crop Science and Consumer Health, because each publishes one careers site.
- Novartis runs a second careers site for staff of acquired businesses that repeats its main listings; it is left out.
Read with care
- A posting is an opening a company advertises, not a hire. Some postings are evergreen or cover several hires.
- Companies publish differently: some list every location separately, some post one requisition for many.
- The country is read from the posting’s location text. A posting listed for several countries counts in the first one named.
- Company totals are a snapshot of what is open, not a measure of growth. Week-on-week change becomes meaningful once several weekly points exist.
Source
Xcout job catalog: postings read from employers’ careers sites, with each posting’s country resolved from its location. Snapshot of 16 October 2026, refreshed weekly.
Editions: 16 October 2026