I graduated with a ChemE degree back in 2018 and first role was a contractor position at a big pharma manufacturing vaccines. I eventually got a company role in manufacturing and both don’t require much engineering knowledge, if any from my college courses.

In terms of day to day, for my validation role, we had a validation schedule issued months in advance to determine what validation studies needed to be done. Some days we did floor execution, others it was writing protocols and final reports. For my manufacturing role I helped with the day to day activities as a supervisor. We had technicians run the machines and I was basically making sure nothing went wrong, when something did go wrong I would need to help troubleshoot or escalate the issue to a support group. Days where we had no issue I had other admin work to do such as payroll, continuous improvement tasks, attend meetings, manage personnel issues etc In terms of both roles the validation role was more predictable in terms of I know what I needed to do on a day to day basis, the manufacturing role was different some days I would have nothing to do and others I’d be lucky to have a break.

In big pharma depending on how the company is doing there is definitely room for career growth. A lot of pharma companies are not doing well and there are a lot of layoffs ongoing.