Bioinformatician looking to pivot into the business side of biotech/pharma (not data science) — advice welcome
Hi all,
Quick background: I have a bachelor's in biotechnology from India and a master's in bioinformatics from Northeastern (graduated December 2025). I started a job in academia about 2 months ago.
I genuinely love bioinformatics, but lately I've been thinking hard about where I want to take my career long-term, and I'm curious about the business side of pharma — things like consulting, business strategy, product, or other non-technical biotech/pharma roles. The problem is I have no idea how to break in or even how to identify the right role to target.
A couple of specifics:
- As a bioinformatics analyst, the "obvious" path to level up is to go all-in on data science/ML. I do work with ML a bit and don't dislike it, but I don't want to go deep into data science as a career — it's just not where my interest lies.
- I love biotech and pharma as an industry and want to stay in it, just not necessarily in a technical/analyst role. I have zero interest in doing a PhD.
Honestly, for the past month I've felt pretty stuck and lost hope on this. I'm confused about what roles to even target or where to start. Every business-side role I look at seems to want an MBA, a PhD, or years of prior experience, and it's starting to feel like a dead end — like the only realistic way to move up is to go all in on data science, which is exactly what I don't want to do.
So I'd really appreciate hearing from anyone who pivoted from a bioinformatics/technical background into something other than data science — whether that's consulting, business strategy, product management, market access, medical affairs, or anything else on the business side. How did you break in? What helped (certifications, networking)? What would you do differently, and is it actually as much of a dead end as it feels right now?
Thanks in advance!