Career Progression Pathways in the Pharmaceutical Industry for IT Engineers

IT engineers can work in a range of different industries – just about any industry you can think of, in fact. One of the most exciting and rewarding, however, is the pharmaceutical industry.

Why?

You can future-proof your career in the pharmaceutical industry.

There are multiple career progression pathways you can pursue depending on your interests and objectives.

Your skills are in demand.

There is a high level of job satisfaction, not least because you will be contributing to the development and production of products that save lives and transform patient outcomes around the world.

Future Proofing Your Career

There are lots of ways to future-proof your career as an engineer and IT professional. Enhancing your soft skills, for example, is important, as is ensuring you are adaptable. Your technical skills also need to be constantly developed, refreshed, and enhanced through ongoing training (both formal and non-formal) and upskilling.

The thing is, (almost) everyone is doing those things.

One way to make your skills and abilities stand out to current and future employers is to get a comprehensive understanding of the industry you work in. This involves developing cross-functional skills, or cross-skilling.

Bringing it back to the pharmaceutical industry, the need for IT engineers with scientific skills, knowledge, and experience is a break-out trend that is growing in significance. Therefore, developing cross-functional skills in scientific areas (in addition to the ongoing development of your technical and soft skills) will enhance the value you can offer to pharmaceutical manufacturing and laboratory operations.

For example, with cross-functional scientific skills, you will be better equipped to develop and deliver IT strategies and solutions that more effectively match the needs and business realities of pharmaceutical operations.

Multiple Career Progression Pathways and Opportunities

There are multiple career progression pathways you can follow by developing pharmaceutical industry-specific skills to complement your technical skills. The infographic below shows how a service desk engineer can progress into validation, compliance, and lab IT/systems architect roles.

In each of the infographic examples, IT engineering skills and capabilities are a crucial starting point. The development of additional science-focused skills then opens new doors and opportunities.

In-Demand Skills

The pharmaceutical industry is a digitally maturing industry that has a current and growing need for IT engineering professionals to do everything from managing day-to-day technical requirements to implementing digital transformation initiatives.

The ability to deliver on the requirements of pharmaceutical industry companies is enhanced when IT engineers have direct knowledge of scientific and compliance issues and processes.

The Importance of Cross-Functional IT Engineering and Scientific Skills

Developing scientific skills enables IT engineers to work more effectively with pharmaceutical industry professionals.

This includes improved communication, strategic thinking, adaptability, problem-solving, decision-making, leadership, influence and, ultimately, better outcomes.

Next Steps

There are multiple ways to develop your career as an IT engineer in the pharmaceutical industry. One of the best is to align with a specialist in this area.

At Westbourne, we are experts in the delivery of technical solutions and services to companies in the pharmaceutical industry. We have well-established training programmes and career development initiatives that cross-skill our IT engineers, enhancing their scientific capabilities for the delivery of solutions to pharmaceutical industry clients.

A good example of the career development initiatives we offer is our Pharma Lab Apprenticeship, where we support our IT engineers to acquire the scientific skills needed to deliver best-in-class services in pharmaceutical laboratory environments.

Making a Difference

With cross-functional technical and scientific skills, you will help laboratory and pharma manufacturing teams operate more efficiently and productively, enhancing pharmaceutical product quality, maximising patient safety, and ensuring compliance.

Making a difference is a bit of a cliché, but it really does apply as IT engineers working in the pharmaceutical industry. If this is something that has sparked your interest, check out our current vacancies or reach out to us to start a discussion.

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