How Do I Move From Big Pharma to Biotech or Rare Disease?

The move comes down to one question the hiring manager is silently asking: can you operate without the machine behind you? Big pharma gives you brand, budget, data, and support teams. Biotech and rare disease often don't. So the candidates who make the jump are the ones who prove they can build, not just run a well-resourced play. Your resume and your story have to show initiative, ambiguity tolerance, and results you drove without a big infrastructure carrying you.

I've built commercial teams for launch-stage rare disease companies, and I've watched who thrives and who struggles in the jump. Here's what actually matters.

Why is it hard to move from big pharma to biotech?

Because hiring managers worry, fairly or not, that big-pharma success came from the platform, not the person. A rep who crushed numbers at a company with a blockbuster brand, a huge budget, and a full support stack hasn't necessarily proven they can win when none of that exists. In a small biotech, you may be building the territory, the materials, and the strategy yourself. The fear is that a big-company operator will freeze without the machine.

Your job is to dismantle that worry with evidence.

What do biotech hiring managers look for from a big pharma candidate?

Signs you can operate lean and take ownership. Times you launched something new, entered a white-space market, built a plan from scratch, worked cross-functionally without being told to, or delivered when resources were thin. Rare disease and specialty roles also value depth over breadth: relationships with key accounts and academic centers, comfort with complex clinical stories, and the patience for small patient populations and long sales cycles.

If your experience has any of that, it needs to be the loudest thing on your resume, not buried under big-brand accomplishments.

How do I reposition my resume for the move?

Reframe big-pharma wins around ownership and outcomes, not brand. "Grew Territory X by 40%" matters less than how you did it and what you built. Foreground launches, new-market entries, cross-functional leadership, and anything resembling the scrappiness a smaller company needs. Cut or minimize accomplishments that only read as "I executed a well-funded plan well." Add the therapeutic-area and account-level language that signals you understand the specialty world.

Do I need biotech experience to get a biotech job?

No, but you need to close the gap in your story. Plenty of successful biotech commercial people came from big pharma. What got them hired was proof of transferable capability and genuine understanding of the smaller-company environment, not a biotech logo already on the resume. If you can show you understand what's different and that you've operated that way before, the lack of a biotech badge is not a dealbreaker.

Yaffa Grace, MPH, has spent two decades on every side of the biopharma hiring table: ten years in pharmaceutical sales at GSK, founder of three executive search firms, and the recruiter who has sat in the rooms where commercial hires get decided. She helps biopharma professionals get hired into the roles they want, and helps rare disease and biotech companies build the teams that get therapies to patients. Founder of Yaffa Grace & Co.

Every Monday I publish The BioPharma Career Intelligence Brief: the rare disease, oncology, gene therapy, and specialty biotech companies that are hiring, which roles they're building, and the recruiter's read on what it means. It's how you see the market the way the people hiring in it do, before the roles go public.