Some of the most common jobs that people search for when considering a career in clinical research are that of ‘research assistant’ and ‘clinical research coordinator.’ It can be quite common for clinical research coordinators (CRC) to remain in their roles for years and even decades, growing their expertise and salary within the role over time. Within the same broader title, they can have promotions from CRC level I to level III and more responsibility where they are handlining much more complex trials or multiple research projects and training new staff and so on. However, there are also lots of opportunities within clinical research where we can use the site-level experience of being a CRC and move on to a more hierarchical career path, rising up the ranks and going into mid and senior level management positions or leading research of our own. In the video below as well as in this article, we learn about these career paths that exist for those of us who are interested in clinical research.

There are 3 main industries where clinical researchers work and these include: Academia, Site, and Pharma/CRO (Contract Research Organization). So, we will explore the career progression and opportunities in each of these sectors individually.

1. Academia

In academia, career progression is heavily based on your degrees and academic qualifications, i.e. your degrees. In Canada, to progress from research assistant (RA) to a Research Associate position, you need to be in a phD program or have completed your phD. The same goes for teaching courses, you would need to be in a phD program in order to be teaching undergraduate courses as a lecturer or assistant professor in training.

In the US, there is some leniency which can allow someone in a master’s program students with good academic standing and good references to take up the role of lecturer/assistant professor to teach or work as a research associate.

In order to become a full principal investigator and lead your own study, you almost always need to have a completed doctoral degree in academia. However, that in itself is not sufficient to guarantee a position as a principal investigator (PI). It is expected that you would acquire further research knowledge at the post doctoral level while also gather teaching experience at the university level. Most PIs have a primary or adjunct relationship with a university through which they teaching as an assistant or associate professor, while conducting research on the side. Some adjunct professors will have a relationship with a university but will be primarily appointed by a research institute. Nonetheless, having a phD, a few years of teaching and research experiences, good publications in moderate to high impact journals – all of these will help in landing that prized position as a PI. This is typically a terminal role, meaning the highest level to be achieved in this field, although you can keep progressing in the teaching side of things by moving from assistant to associate to full professor. You can try to get tenure, you can try to become chair of different research programs and gather more prestige as you go through prestigious grants and awards.

If you want to learn more, here is a video of what it’s like to work in clinical research at an academic institutions.

2. Trial Sites (e.g. Hospitals/Clinics)

For physician led trials or pharma sponsored trials, the perfect place to start off your clinical trial career is at the site level. Sites refer to the hospitals or clinics where clinical trials take place, recruit patients, perform the drug or surgical interventions, assess patients, performed diagnostics tests and more. In Canada, sites refer to hospitals or clinics where these trial processes take place. Similar to academic, the starting or entry-level role in this setting would be that of a clinical research assistant or a clinical trial assistant. The next step up would be that of a clinical research coordinator (CRC) also known as a clinnical trials coordinator.

There are, of course, many different steps within each of these roles, and would be referred to as a CRC I, CRC II, CRC III and so on. Some trial teams teams may have research associates while others do not. This really depends on the type of trial and how largescale it is and what functions of the trial are conducted at the site level.

Following this, there are two potential ways to go. If you want to be an ‘investigator’ for a pharma sponsored study, you would need to have an MD/Physician and be working in that particular specialty. Typically CRCs do not plan on going to medical school for nearly 10 years so they can also take the research path. These options exist within larger hospitals and hospital affiliated research institutes where multiple trials are running, often spanning several different departments and specialties. In such cases, you can move on to become project managers or clinical program managers. Further down the career path some institutes my have roles such as Director of Clinical Research in which one would be responsible to provide senior management and leadership to all ongoing trials and research projects in that organization and ensuring they are aligned with the values of the organization. These senior leadership roles would requires nearly a decade of experience or more, great instincts, and a knowledge of the infrastructure and logistics of research within and beyond the organization. They would focus on building partnerships or supporting departments and investigators through resources and supports in place to help them establish relationships with pharma or grow their research profile.

I have worked as a clinical trials coordinator within a pharma sponsored study at a hospital recently so if you want to learn more of what that is like, don’t forget to check out this video.

3. Pharmaceutical Companies/CRO

If you love the high efficiency of the corporate world tied in with management skills focused on clinical trials, then working for a CRO or a Pharma company might be just the thing for you! Both in Canada and the US, climbing up the ladder in pharma or industry does not depend so much on your academic qualifications and degrees, as it does on your real life skills and experiences. It is all about getting the job done! A good entry level position in this industry would be that of a clinical trial assistant, followed by a research associate. A clinical research associate and a senior clinical research associate often function as study monitors. Study monitors are essentially people who are responsible to centrally monitor many different ongoing clinical trials and ensure they are each meeting their ethical, legal and protocol requirements. This position is typically remote work from home with some travel required to visit each of the sites a few times a year to do on site monitoring visits. Associates work in parallel with clinical data analysts, those in pharmacovigilance, clinician experts and more. All these positions can move up to become managers, be it clinical data managers or clinical trial regional managers. Many of these positions can eventually go on to become global leads, regional leads, and vice presidents of different functions. They join other mid and senior management positions in determining the plan for growth and retention of the organization.

More details on the salary scales and the responsibilities of these positions are available on the video here.