Midweek job roll: 3rd Feb

Tasty chemistry: If you’d like to be paid £20-25k to develop and test new flavours for soups, sauces and baked goods, look no further – with a diploma in science you could become a flavours application specialist in East Anglia. Some experience in the food industry required (unfortunately this probably doesn’t include a summer job shelf stacking in Tesco). Alternatively, if you “have experience with chocolate products” you may prefer this sensory and consumer scientist role in Berkshire. £30k and global travel, but a few more job-relevant pre-requisites.

Optimistic ad of the week: If you’ve lived a media-free life since the day this advert was placed, you may be tempted to become a research unit liaison group expert in pharmacokinetics, dynamics and metabolism. Quoted as a permanent role, one wonders how long it will exist in its advertised location.

PhD-qualified or experienced MSc medicinal chemists interested in a position across the border in Wales - this biotechnology company are offering £28k.

Among the plethora of analytical positions being advertised, two on NewScientistJobs are Up North: a development analyst role for a pharmaceutical company in Leeds (£23-27k, permanent); the other for an R&D analytical chemist in E Yorkshire which involves business travel (up to £35k, permanent).

Finally, ChemistryWorldJobs – run by the RSC – deserves special mention this week for its shiny new interface. Hopefully the number of jobs will increase accordingly, but already there are ads from Key Organics in Cornwall for contract synthetic organic chemists (plural, note!); and Lilly in Surrey for contract synthetic organic chemists (plural, again!) and a chromatographer.

32 Companies

Unfortunately the large companies with the large salaries are generally the ones that aren’t recruiting or are actively cutting back their workforce. Nevertheless, here are 32 companies of various sizes from the UK healthcare sector that may be worth checking occasionally.

Listed are the links to their UK website and careers page, with info on whether they're advertising for chemist R&D positions on their site (on 2/2/11). Note that not all companies advertise vacancies on their own site (a lot go through agencies) so this list is just another tool in the job searching armory.

Abbott – Job site – none in R&D

AstraZeneca – Job site - pharmacometrician, med comms scientist, chemometrics, DMPK

Bayer – Job site – none in R&D

Boehringer Ingelheim – Job site – none in R&D

Bristol-Myers Squibb – Job site – none in R&D

Chroma – Job site – PhD medicinal chemist (beyond closing date)

Eisai – Job site – none in R&D

Eli Lilly – Job site – none in R&D

Evotec – Job site – snr medicinal chemist

GE Healthcare – Job site – development technologist

Gilead Sciences – Job site - regulatory

GSK – Job site – formulation, new products

Johnson & Johnson – Job site – none in R&D

Merck Serono – Job site – none in R&D

Merck Sharp Dohme – Job site – reg affairs

Mundi Int – Job site – none in R&D

Novartis – Job site – chemical engineer, stats

Prosidion – Job site – principal formulation scientist, team leaders, scientists, snr scientists

Pfizer – Job site – none in R&D

Proctor & Gamble – Job site – lab tech, technical information scientist, QA

Roche – Job site – none in R&D

Sanofi-Aventis – Job site – none in R&D

Servier – Job site – none in R&D

Shire – Job site – directors, packaging&labeling, snr medical writer

Sigma Aldrich – Job site – process chemist

Syngenta – Job site – chemical indexing officer

Takeda – Job site – none in R&D

Teva – Job site – regulatory

UCB – Job site – devices, M&S

Unilever – Job site – material spec specialist

Vectura – Job site – formulation specialist

Vertex – Job site – DMPK research scientist

Monthly Stats Round-up: Jan 2011

All UK chemistry-related jobs added to the main sites in the Jan 2011 (and still up):

NewScientistJobs
“chemist”=76, “chemistry”=120, Chemistry section=119
Monster
“chemist”=54, “chemistry”= 196
Reed
“chemist”=84, “chemistry”= 374
ChemistyWorldJobs (RSC)
all jobs=15
Jobs.ac.uk
all academic chemistry positions=110
Jobisjob.co.uk
“chemist”=450, “chemistry”=~2200

Fingers crossed things pick up in February - even December had more listings than this...

Pfizer to exit Sandwich

It’s with considerable sadness that the first major UK chemistry job cuts of the year have been announced. In their Financial Guidance and 2010 Results press release, Pfizer today announced they will be exiting the Sandwich, Kent site by 2012.

According to the UK Pfizer website, 3600 staff are based at the site – 2700 of whom work in R&D. Given the reference to PGM on this page it’s likely these figures are somewhat dated (Manufacturing vacated Sandwich in 2007, with the loss of 420 jobs). The local and national press are quoting a figure of 2400 employees - which may not include all the contractor supporting functions on-site.

The move will provide some of the $1.5bn cost savings to reduce Pfizer’s forecasted R&D spend in 2012 from $8 to $8.5bn down to $6.5 to $7bn. To further increase shareholder value, Pfizer also announced they would repurchase ~$5bn of stock, which is not expected to constrain their ability to continue dividend increases. By lunchtime, PFE shares were up over 5%.

While Pfizer, Kent County Council and a Local Enterprise Partnership pursue options for investment at the site by other companies, a significant number of scientists will be leaving the area. Some will pursue new opportunities, while others will make the decision to stay in chemistry. Over the next few weeks, LabMonkey will be looking into the former, and asks for your help with the latter.

If you know of any available positions at your company - or would like to share job adverts that you find with others - then please email me with the details and I’ll list them here. Good luck to all.