What to expect from a career in pharmaceutical engineering

If you didn’t already know it, the pharmaceutical industry is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world. According to PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the global pharmaceutical market is expected to reach a revenue of US$1,155 billion in 2024.

An expanding middle class and high demand for medicines in emerging and growth markets will continue to evolve this industry. The industry continues to offer diverse career options to both fresh graduates and experts.

Engineer’s role in the pharmaceutical industry

In the mainline pharmaceutical industry, engineers play a key role in all aspects of this vital industry from discovery to drug development to manufacturing and marketing – starting from the design of a new facility to optimizing manufacturing processes and refining packaging solutions. 

• Pharmaceutical engineers also play a key role in the development, design, and manufacturing of equipment, machinery, and solutions used across the drug discovery, development, and manufacturing cycle.
• The most important distinction in pharmaceutical engineering is the industry’s strict prerequisite for good manufacturing practice (GMP). 
• Pharmaceutical engineers must be able to deal with complicated GMP demands starting from concept, qualification, and validation to development, implementation, and execution of an excellent quality pharmaceutical system.

Challenges and Rewards of Being a Pharmaceutical Engineer

A pharmaceutical engineer’s job directly or indirectly contributes to saving lives, whether in mainline pharma or allied industries supporting pharma, biotech, or healthcare. 

The job is both challenging and rewarding, especially concerning regulatory compliance. The pharmaceutical industry is one the most highly regulated industries in the world and with very good reason. 

To excel as a pharmaceutical engineer, you must be able to handle the increasingly complex risk-based GMP regulations that come with the job irrespective of the function you opt for.

A typical day for a pharmaceutical engineer will depend on the company they work in and the role they perform. 

Roles include research of new drugs and drug delivery systems, upgrading processes, pharmaceutical manufacturing, labelling and packaging, facility design, system and process automation, sales and marketing, compliance, management, and education.

Join team Fabtech to make life-saving medicines accessible to all

Fabtech is one of the world’s foremost pharmaceutical engineering consulting firms that offer turnkey solutions to pharmaceutical and biotech companies as well as research centres and hospitals. 

At Fabtech we call ourselves Life Engineers – we are committed to building pharmaceutical capability all over the world to ensure everyone has access to affordable medicines, especially those that save lives.

We have several challenging and rewarding opportunities for pharmaceutical engineers to excel in any of our functional areas at our pharmaceutical engineering consulting firm. 

So if you are considering a future in pharmaceutical engineering, our careers page is a good place to start. Apply now to take the next step in your pharmaceutical engineering journey.