The HEOR Salary &
Career Report.
What HEOR pays — and why nobody publishes it.
Health Economics and Outcomes Research — HEOR — sits at the centre of how modern medicines reach patients. It is the discipline that decides whether a new drug is funded, at what price, and on what evidence. It pays well, the work is intellectually demanding, and the people doing it carry unusual influence inside pharma. It is also remarkably hard to enter, hard to navigate once you are in, and almost impossible to benchmark from the outside.
Job titles vary between companies. Reporting lines shift between Medical, Market Access, and Commercial. Recruiters publish glossy salary surveys that paint with a roller. Glassdoor posts are sparse, inconsistent, and skew junior. The result is that most working HEOR professionals — even mid-career ones — do not have a clear, honest view of what their peers earn, what good progression looks like, or where the field's best-paid corners actually sit.
This report is built to close that gap. It synthesises public salary benchmarks from the major life-sciences recruiters, aggregates compensation data from open sources — Glassdoor, Salary.com, SalaryExpert / ERI, ZipRecruiter, levels.fyi, PayScale, Paylab, 6figr — and validates against current employer-specific postings at the firms doing most of the hiring. The 2027 edition will add a primary survey of working HEOR professionals — see What’s next ❓.
If you are deciding whether to enter the field, whether to move from consulting to industry, whether to push for a promotion, or whether to take that offer in Munich — the numbers in this report are designed to give you a defensible baseline. Not gospel. A baseline.
What you'll find inside (click any card to jump →)
What HEOR actually is.
HEOR exists because regulators do not pay for drugs; payers do. Once a medicine is approved, somebody has to make the case that it is worth funding. That case has four broad components, and most HEOR roles specialise in one or two of them.
The four functions of HEOR
Evidence generation
Designing and commissioning the studies — prospective trials, real-world evidence, registries, observational work, plus PRO (patient-reported outcome) and COA (clinical outcome assessment) development and validation — that will eventually be submitted to payers. The job is to anticipate what payers will ask three to five years before they ask it. Strong overlap with epidemiology and clinical development.
Economic modelling
Building the cost-effectiveness, cost-utility, and budget-impact models that quantify a treatment's value to a health system. In the UK this is the model NICE assesses. In Germany the same modelling skill supports AMNOG dossier construction. In the US it underwrites AMCP dossiers and payer pitch decks. The most technically specialised, best-paid, and most consistently in-demand HEOR skill.
Value communication & dossiers
Translating the evidence and the model into payer-facing documents — the NICE single technology appraisal, the AMNOG benefit dossier, the AMCP format dossier, and the unbranded global value dossier that feeds all of them. Heavy writing, heavy stakeholder management, and a strong understanding of what each HTA body actually wants to see.
Market access strategy
Choosing the launch sequence, the pricing strategy, and the evidence-generation plan that maximises a product's chance of success across markets. The most senior HEOR people end up here, sometimes still under an HEOR title, more often under "Global Value & Access" or "Pricing & Market Access".
What HEOR is not
In a nutshell 🥜
The six employer types.
This is the section most early-career HEOR people say they wish they had read three years sooner. None of these categories are a hierarchy — each has its own trade-offs on pay, hours, mission, and what your CV will look like five years from now.
Pharma
Highest pay at every level
In-house manufacturers — product-anchored work.
Consulting
Steepest learning curve
Most common entry point for graduates.
Payer / HTA bodies
Best résumé credential
NICE, IQWiG, ICER. Travels back into industry.
Insurance & PBMs
Strong WLB, competitive base
US plans, German GKVs, PBMs. Stress-test dossiers.
Hospitals & health systems
Smaller market, niche entry
Academic medical centres, IDNs. Outcomes & value analytics.
Academia
Most intellectual freedom
Universities — methodological innovation. Lowest base.
💊 Pharma (in-house manufacturers)
The largest single employer of HEOR talent and the destination most consultants eventually move toward. Work is product-anchored: you are attached to one or several assets and your job is to build the global value story for them across launch and lifecycle. Pay is the highest of any employer type at every level, particularly when factoring in bonus and long-term incentive. Hours are demanding but generally predictable; the culture is matrixed and politically dense. Progression is via line management or a technical-fellow track that exists at most large pharmas.
Typical employers (hover to pause · click for LinkedIn):
📊 Consulting and agencies
The second-largest employer, and the most common entry point for graduates. You work across multiple clients, across multiple therapeutic areas, often building economic models or writing global value dossiers under tight deadlines. Learning curve is steep — a strong consultant at three years has typically built more models, across more indications, than a peer in industry. Pay starts competitive but plateaus below industry at the senior-manager and director levels, which is why the industry jump at five to eight years' experience is so common.
Typical employers (hover to pause · click for LinkedIn):
⚖️ Payer and HTA bodies
HEOR roles inside HTA bodies (NICE and SMC in the UK, IQWiG and G-BA in Germany, ICER and AMCP in the US, plus equivalents in France, Canada, and Australia) often pay less than pharma on paper but compete on work-life balance, mission, and — critically — a credential that travels. An ex-NICE committee member or ex-IQWiG reviewer is a preferred hire for almost any senior in-house pharma role.
Typical employers (hover to pause · click for LinkedIn):
🛡️ Insurance & PBMs
The payer-side equivalent of HEOR — sitting inside an insurance plan, a pharmacy benefit manager (PBM), or an integrated delivery network and stress-testing the dossiers manufacturers submit. The work is the inverse of in-house pharma: instead of building the case, you stress-test it. Hours are more predictable than pharma, equity is rare but base salaries are competitive, and the credential travels back into industry at a premium once you decide to switch sides. (See Section 08 for why this is one of the most under-discussed paths in the field.)
Typical employers (hover to pause · click for LinkedIn):
🏥 Hospitals & health systems
A smaller HEOR employer pool but a genuinely distinct one. Academic medical centres and integrated delivery networks (think Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, NHS Foundation Trusts, German university hospitals) hire HEOR-adjacent talent for value analysis, outcomes research, and formulary committee support. Pay tracks closer to academia than to industry but the work is unusually close to the clinical front line. Best fit for HEOR practitioners who want to see their analyses change actual treatment decisions, not just submission documents.
Typical employers (hover to pause · click for LinkedIn):
🎓 Academia
Universities with strong health economics groups produce most of the methodological innovation the field uses. Pay is the lowest of any employer type and progression is slow, but the intellectual freedom is the highest, and senior academics frequently combine a chair with paid consulting, expert witness work, and ad-hoc HTA committee membership that can rival a senior industry salary in aggregate.
Typical employers (hover to pause · click for LinkedIn):
THE ONE THAT MOST PEOPLE MISS
Payer-side HEOR — sitting inside a US insurance plan, PBM, or integrated delivery network and stress-testing the dossiers manufacturers submit — has quietly become competitive with in-house pharma at the Manager-to-Director level. We unpack it in Section 08 ("Hidden roles").
The roles — from Analyst to C-suite.
The titles vary — "Associate Director" and "Principal" are common synonyms for Senior Manager and Director respectively — but the responsibilities and pay bands track this structure closely. Years-of-experience bands are typical, not prescriptive: technical specialists often move faster up the career ladder, while clinical-to-HEOR converters often take longer on the first two steps.
The entry tier. In consulting you are doing literature reviews, model maintenance, data extraction, and second-author work on dossiers. In pharma you are supporting a more senior HEOR lead across one or two assets. The skill bar is foundational Excel modelling, PRISMA-compliant systematic literature review, and competence in R or Stata. Common titles: Analyst, Associate, Health Economics Analyst, Junior Consultant.
The first promotion. You are now building models from scratch (not just maintaining them), running indirect treatment comparisons, and taking ownership of slide decks and dossier sections under a manager. The most career-defining work you'll do at this level is your first end-to-end submission. Common titles: Senior Analyst, Consultant, Senior Health Economist.
The fork in the road. You either start managing one or two direct reports (management track) or you specialise deep on a technical capability — modelling, MAIC / NMA, RWE — and stay individual-contributor (specialist track). Both tracks exist at most pharmas and most large consultancies. Common titles: Manager, Senior Consultant, HEOR Manager.
Owning a workstream end-to-end. In pharma this typically means a therapy area or a single high-value asset across the product lifecycle. In consulting it means owning a client account or a technical service line. Heavy stakeholder management starts here. Common titles: Senior Manager, Associate Director, Principal, Senior Principal.
Setting strategy across multiple assets or markets. In pharma this is the level where Market Access strategy formally rolls in; many HEOR Directors carry a portfolio-level value-and-access remit. The cash-compensation jump from Senior Manager to Director is usually the largest single promotion jump in the entire ladder. Common titles: Director, Senior Director, Head of HEOR.
Functional leadership. You run the HEOR organisation, or a major sub-function (Global Value & Access, Real-World Evidence). Equity / LTI dominates total compensation. Roughly half the people at this level have done a stint at a payer, an HTA body, or a regulator at some point in their career. Common titles: Executive Director, Senior Director, Vice President, Global Head of HEOR / Market Access. General Manager roles (leading a country affiliate) and Business Unit Director roles (leading a therapy area P&L) sit at this level too — both are common destinations for HEOR senior leaders who want a commercial line role.
A small number of HEOR-trained executives eventually reach Chief Medical Officer, Chief Commercial Officer, or comparable positions. Total compensation at this level routinely runs into seven figures (base + bonus + equity + LTI vesting), but the route is highly individual, often involves a non-HEOR detour, and the published comp ranges are essentially meaningless — packages are bespoke. We do not benchmark C-suite cells in the salary tables because the spread destroys any percentile claim. Treat C-suite as possible, not as a planning target.
Specialist tracks (parallel to management)
Alongside the management ladder, four specialist tracks run in parallel. Specialists earn at or above the manager track without managing people, which is the right move for technically inclined HEOR professionals who do not want to lead teams.
Health Economic Modeller
Builds the cost-effectiveness, cost-utility, and budget-impact models that sit under every dossier. Lives in Excel, R, sometimes TreeAge or DICE. The most internationally portable HEOR specialism — a great modeller in London can take a remote contract for a Boston biotech without changing time-zone behaviour.
RWE / Epidemiology Lead
Designs and oversees real-world evidence studies — external control arms, registry studies, observational comparisons. Typically has an epi background; sits closer to clinical than to the modelling team, but increasingly core to HEOR because regulators and payers both want RWE in submissions.
Market Access / Value & Pricing
The bridge between HEOR and Commercial. Owns the launch sequencing, price corridor, and access strategy across markets. Frequently the destination role for senior HEOR people who prefer strategy to method.
HTA Submissions Specialist & GVD Author
Writes the NICE submissions, AMNOG dossiers, AMCP format documents, and the unbranded Global Value Dossiers (GVDs) that feed every country-specific submission. A combination of deep methodological knowledge and unusually strong writing. The GVD-writer specialism travels well into a freelance practice once you have a strong client roster (see Section 08 — Hidden roles).
The salary tables.
Three further caveats. First, in-house pharma and the largest consultancies sit at the upper end of every band; smaller agencies and academia sit at the lower. Second, the US distribution is wider than the UK and Germany distributions because US compensation at senior levels includes a substantial equity component. Third, the metro-level premium described above compresses at Director level, where many headquarters roles are already located in those high-cost cities.
The source methodology is in the Appendix. Where Glassdoor / Salary.com / SalaryExpert / ZipRecruiter cells agreed to within ~10%, we used the midpoint. Where they diverged, we leaned on employer-specific data (AbbVie, Pfizer, Novartis, AstraZeneca, Takeda, Costello Medical, IQVIA postings) and flagged the spread in the notes below each table.
United Kingdom — £ GBP, total compensation
| Level | 25th %ile | Median | 75th %ile |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 · Analyst / Associate 0–2 yrs | £33,000 | £38,000 | £45,000 |
| 02 · Senior Analyst / Consultant 2–4 yrs | £46,000 | £55,000 | £68,000 |
| 03 · Manager / Senior Consultant 4–7 yrs | £65,000 | £78,000 | £92,000 |
| 04 · Senior Manager / AD / Principal 7–12 yrs | £85,000 | £105,000 | £125,000 |
| 05 · Director 12–18 yrs | £120,000 | £150,000 | £180,000 |
| 06 · Senior Director / VP 18+ yrs | £170,000* | £210,000* | £270,000* |
What the UK numbers say. The two biggest jumps are Manager → Senior Manager (~£27k median, +35%) and Senior Manager → Director (~£45k median, +43%). These are the rungs where in-house pharma decisively pulls ahead of consulting. A Consultant Health Economist at Costello Medical earning £61.5–68.5k will see an equivalent Senior Manager / AD Market Access role at a top-10 pharma land at £85–105k once bonus and benefits are included — the agency-to-pharma jump at mid-career is typically 30–40% in total compensation.
Germany — € EUR, total compensation
| Level | 25th %ile | Median | 75th %ile |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 · Analyst / Associate 0–2 yrs | €46,000 | €52,000 | €60,000 |
| 02 · Senior Analyst / Consultant 2–4 yrs | €58,000 | €68,000 | €78,000 |
| 03 · Manager / Senior Consultant 4–7 yrs | €72,000 | €85,000 | €100,000 |
| 04 · Senior Manager / AD / Principal 7–12 yrs | €95,000 | €115,000 | €140,000 |
| 05 · Director 12–18 yrs | €130,000 | €160,000 | €200,000 |
| 06 · Senior Director / VP 18+ yrs | €180,000 | €230,000 | €290,000 |
What the German numbers say. Germany's market-access ladder pays consistently above the UK from Senior Manager (Level 04) upward — driven by the structural importance of AMNOG dossier work and the absence of London-style consulting concentration to depress mid-tier in-house pay. A German Director at the median (€160k) earns roughly 7% more than the UK equivalent at the same level, before currency effects. The gap widens further at VP level. The flip side: Germany compresses junior pay — an Analyst median of €52k is broadly comparable to a UK Analyst at £38k once cost of living is adjusted.
United States — $ USD, total compensation (base + bonus + equity / LTI)
| Level | 25th %ile | Median | 75th %ile |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 · Analyst / Associate 0–2 yrs | $85,000 | $105,000 | $130,000 |
| 02 · Senior Analyst / Consultant 2–4 yrs | $115,000 | $140,000 | $170,000 |
| 03 · Manager / Senior Consultant 4–7 yrs | $145,000 | $180,000 | $220,000 |
| 04 · Senior Manager / AD / Principal 7–12 yrs | $210,000 | $265,000 | $330,000 |
| 05 · Director 12–18 yrs | $280,000 | $370,000 | $510,000 |
| 06 · Senior Director / VP 18+ yrs | $380,000 | $500,000 | $720,000 |
What the US numbers say. The US distribution is wider than the UK and Germany at every level, driven entirely by the equity component. At Director level, the 25th-to-75th percentile range spans $280k–$510k — almost a 2× spread — because two Directors at the same nominal title can have radically different RSU grant sizes depending on employer (AstraZeneca's Director HEOR median sits at $462k, roughly 25% above the cross-pharma Glassdoor median of $369k). For the rough base / bonus / equity split: at Director level expect approximately $240k base, $40k bonus, $90k LTI; at VP level approximately $400k base + $400–500k LTI vested over three years.
Case study: what does the C-suite earn?
HEOR is rarely the direct route to a Chief Executive seat — those are filled almost entirely from clinical, commercial, finance, or operations tracks. But it's worth knowing the magnitude of pay at the very top, both as career context and as a reality check on what an HEOR practitioner moving into Chief Commercial or Chief Strategy Officer roles can negotiate. All figures below are FY2024 total reported compensation from public proxy filings; almost all of it is equity vesting over 3–5 years rather than cash.
Reference points, not planning targets. Total comp at this tier is individually negotiated, dominated by equity, and varies year-to-year with company performance. The reason these are CEO names rather than HEOR-trained executives is simple: there are essentially no HEOR-trained big-pharma CEOs at present. The closest analogues sit one rung below as Chief Commercial Officer or Head of Global Value & Access, where total comp typically lands in the $3M–$8M band.
The vesting trap — and why people walk away from real money.
Equity compensation isn't free money. It's a contract: the employer grants you a chunk of stock, and you only "earn" it over time by staying with them. The mechanics are the same almost everywhere in big pharma — typically a four-year vesting schedule with a one-year cliff (you forfeit everything if you leave inside the first 12 months), then quarterly or annual vesting after that. The longer you stay, the more equity vests. The day you walk, everything unvested disappears.
Worked example: a $50,000 sign-on equity grant that vests evenly over four years.
That looks small. Now scale it. At a real big-pharma Director or VP level, equity isn't a $50k sign-on — it's an annual grant in the $100k–$400k+ range, stacked on top of base + bonus. Each year's grant has its own four-year vest. By year three you're sitting on three overlapping unvested grants. Walk away and you're forfeiting six-figure sums of future vesting in the same email that announces your resignation. This is the "golden cage" — or, more honestly, the "dangling carrot." A perpetual just-out-of-reach reward that quietly tilts every "should I leave?" conversation toward "let me just see this next tranche vest first." It's the single biggest reason senior people stay in roles they've quietly outgrown.
I know what this feels like first-hand. When I left Gilead, I walked away from a six-figure sum in unvested stock — money I'd already "earned" in the moral sense but hadn't yet earned in the contractual sense. The choice to leave was still right (the next move was worth more in career terms, and the role I was leaving wasn't working). But the financial bite was real, and worth being clear-eyed about before you sign the grant agreement, not after.
Three implications for the rest of your career:
- Negotiate the sign-on grant when you join. Pharma will often replace some of what you're forfeiting at your prior employer — but only if you ask, and only if you have the unvested amount documented in writing.
- Time your moves around vesting calendars where possible. If a tranche vests in March, don't resign in February. The marginal cost of waiting six weeks can be six figures.
- Read the grant agreement. Standard four-year cliffs are the norm, but a small minority of employers have unusual structures — accelerated vesting on acquisition, longer cliffs, performance-based vesting that can be clawed back. Know what you've signed before you bank on it.
Three patterns worth noticing 🧩
The skill ladder.
Technical skills
Foundational (Analyst → Senior Analyst)
- Excel modelling: probabilistic sensitivity analysis, Markov state transitions, partitioned survival.
- Systematic literature review and PRISMA reporting.
- Basic survival analysis: Kaplan–Meier, Cox proportional hazards, parametric extrapolation.
- R or Stata for analysis; some functional SAS exposure where required.
Mid-career (Manager → Senior Manager)
- Network meta-analysis and indirect treatment comparison (MAIC, STC — anchored and unanchored).
- Cost-utility model building from scratch, not just maintenance of inherited models.
- Budget-impact modelling tailored to UK, German, and US payer environments.
- Reading and critically appraising HTA appraisal documents (NICE TAs, IQWiG dossiers, ICER reports).
Senior (Director → VP)
- Multi-country evidence strategy across the product lifecycle.
- Adaptive payer engagement — early scientific advice, parallel consultation, managed access agreements.
- Portfolio-level prioritisation: knowing which assets to invest evidence in, and which to defer.
Domain knowledge
Domain knowledge is the axis on which junior HEOR people are weakest and the axis that promotion-time conversations are won and lost on. The three pillars are: (1) HTA methods by country, (2) therapy-area depth, and (3) the regulatory–reimbursement interface.
- HTA methods by country: NICE methods guide, IQWiG's general methods, ICER's value framework. Re-read each annually — they change.
- Therapy area depth: at least one TA you can speak to a clinician about without sounding like an HEOR person. Oncology and rare disease are highest paid; cardiovascular and diabetes are most reliable.
- Regulatory–reimbursement interface: what FDA / EMA accept that NICE / IQWiG / ICER will then challenge. The two-document gap is where most submissions fail.
Soft skills
The hardest soft skill in HEOR is influencing without authority. You are advising a commercial team that outranks you and outnumbers you, telling them their preferred price is unsupported. The senior HEOR people who make Director are the ones who learn to do this without breaking the relationship.
- Translating model outputs into a one-slide narrative a Commercial VP will sign off on.
- Defending an ICER under interrogation from an ERG / EAG reviewer.
- Running a payer advisory board without leading the witness.
- Stakeholder management across Medical, Regulatory, Commercial, and Pricing simultaneously.
Two career poles: Leadership vs. Expertise
The skill ladder above maps what you can do; the diagram below maps where those skills can take you. Almost every HEOR career eventually trends toward one of two poles. Leadership roles (Manager → Senior Manager → Executive) trade individual technical depth for organisational reach. Expertise roles (Expert → Senior expert → Executive expert) stay individual-contributor but earn at or above the management track by being indispensable in a single capability. Most senior HEOR people end up somewhere between the two poles rather than at either extreme.
Two parallel career tracks: Leadership (people, strategy, organisational reach) and Expertise (deep technical work as an individual contributor). Most HEOR careers begin near the centre and tilt toward one track within the first 2–3 years. The dashed red arrows are the moments people switch tracks — most commonly mid-career (junior expertise → leadership), and at the senior level (the Chief Strategy / Chief Commercial route from deep expertise back into the leadership pole). The two are not mutually exclusive: many senior people have done time on both rails.
USE THIS AS A DIAGNOSTIC — THE 80% / 50% RULE
If you can tick more than 80% of the bullets at your current level, you are probably under-promoted. If you can tick fewer than 50% of the bullets at the level above yours, you are not yet ready for it — focus on the gap. The chart on the right shows it visually.
A companion tool — the HEOR Roadmap — turns this into an interactive diagnostic with recommended next moves. See Section 10.
Three paths in.
Path 1 — From a related quantitative discipline
Epidemiology, biostatistics, academic health economics, public health. This is the most common route in and the most efficient. A Masters in Health Economics from York, Sheffield, LSE, Bocconi, or Erasmus is the canonical credential; a PhD is not required and often delays entry by two to three years for marginal pay benefit.
Typical entry: graduate scheme at IQVIA, ICON, Cytel, or a specialist boutique. Realistic time-to-Manager: three to four years if you join consulting; four to five if you join in-house pharma directly. Pitfall: over-indexing on academic theory and under-indexing on Excel — graduates who can build a clean partitioned-survival model in their first year are the ones who get promoted in their second.
Path 2 — Lateral from clinical or medical affairs
Pharmacists, physicians, nurses with a strong quantitative bent, often via an MSc or short course in health economics midway through a clinical career. The route is harder — you have to demonstrate you can model, not just opine on clinical practice — but the destination is well-paid because the combined clinical-plus-HEOR profile is rare and prized in oncology and rare disease.
Typical entry: a Senior Medical Advisor moves into a Senior HEOR Manager role at the same company, frequently in the same therapy area. Realistic time-to-conversion: 12–18 months part-time of methodological retraining before the lateral move is credible. Pitfall: assuming clinical credibility transfers automatically. It does not. Recruiters will test for evidence of methodological work.
Path 3 — The graduate route
BSc or MSc in economics, mathematics, statistics, biological sciences, or pharmacy, joining a graduate scheme. The major consultancies hire 20–80 grads a year between them; in-house pharma graduate schemes that include HEOR rotation are smaller but more diverse in exposure.
Realistic time-to-Manager: four to six years. Pitfall: the most common single mistake graduates make is staying too long in a first consulting role — the highest-paid trajectory involves an early industry move at three to five years, before consulting tenure starts to penalise rather than reward.
Whichever path: three things that move salaries fastest
Working on a successful launch — from late-Phase 2 evidence planning through HTA submission — is the single most career-accelerating experience in HEOR. It compresses three years of generic experience into one. If your current employer doesn't have a launch you can attach yourself to, move to one that does.
Generalists are easy to replace. Therapy-area specialists, particularly in oncology, rare disease, and increasingly cell and gene therapy, are not. Specialisation drives the upper quartile of the salary tables in Section 05 more than any other single variable.
Every senior HEOR person writes well. Dossiers, advisory briefings, executive summaries, position papers — if your writing is forgettable, your career will be. The fastest way to improve: write something publishable. A LinkedIn long-form post, a Value & Outcomes Spotlight piece, a conference abstract. Pick one and ship. If you want structured help with scientific writing specifically, The Write Clinic runs the most respected workshops in the field.
Sharpening your profile before you apply
Once the methods are in place and you've picked a therapy area, the next set of moves is about making yourself visible and credible to the people who hire. Most HEOR job markets are surprisingly small and high-trust — the senior people doing the hiring already know the names that will come up in a shortlist conversation before any CVs are screened. Get on that list.
- Publish, even once a year. A single first-author Value in Health, PharmacoEconomics, or ISPOR conference abstract puts you in the indexed-author bucket. Co-author counts too. Your ORCID and Google Scholar become the proof-of-work that recruiters and hiring managers actually click on.
- Present at ISPOR or HTAi. Submit a poster. The barrier is lower than you think and a single accepted poster gets you into the right corridor conversations. Volunteering for an ISPOR special-interest group or Health Technology Assessment Council compounds this.
- Build an opinionated LinkedIn presence — slowly. Two or three substantive posts a month on methods, HTA decisions, or career topics beats one viral post. Hiring managers will look at your LinkedIn before any interview; what they see should pattern-match to "this person thinks like one of us."
- Open-source something. A reproducible model on GitHub, a tutorial notebook, a cleaned-up Markov template, a write-up of a published HTA appraisal — or contribute to the Open Source Model Library. Anything that proves you've actually built, not just talked about it. The bar for HEOR open-source work is low; even modest contributions stand out.
- Keep a running log of your achievements. Especially if you're already in industry. Every shipped model, every dossier section you led, every committee response, every cross-functional save — write it down as it happens, with one sentence on the impact. It takes 30 seconds. When the annual self-assessment / internal promotion cycle lands, you'll have a year of concrete examples rather than a panicked attempt to remember March. Recruiters and hiring managers value the same specifics.
- Update your CV the day before you need it. Don't wait until you're applying. A quarterly 30-minute review (achievements, dates, project titles) means you can respond to a recruiter within an hour, which materially increases your conversion. Recruiters work to slots — the candidate who replies fastest often gets the first interview slot.
The hidden roles nobody talks about.
These roles show up here because they consistently produce higher reported job satisfaction — and, in several cases, higher pay — than peers at the same level inside conventional pharma. They are also the roles most often missed by recruiters running keyword searches against typical HEOR titles.
Payer-side HEOR analyst (US, especially)
Insurance plans, PBMs, and integrated delivery networks need HEOR talent to evaluate the dossiers manufacturers submit. The work is the inverse of in-house pharma: instead of building the case, you stress-test it. Hours are more predictable than pharma, equity is rare but base salaries are competitive, and the credential travels back into industry at a premium once you decide to switch sides. Employers worth knowing: Express Scripts / Evernorth, CVS Caremark, OptumRx, Kaiser Permanente, Anthem / Elevance, Humana, the VHA. Pay-band evidence is drawn from Glassdoor employer pages for ESI / Evernorth, OptumRx, and Humana, cross-checked with role postings on the AMCP careers board. The work-life-balance and credential-portability claims reflect repeated reports from career-switchers in the Mirko von Hein YouTube community and from Pharma Radar reader correspondence — anecdotal but consistent across dozens of conversations.
HTA body assessor
NICE, SMC, IQWiG, ICER, CADTH, PBAC all employ permanent technical staff to run appraisals. Pay is below pharma at every level — typically 30–40% below an equivalent in-house pharma role — but the work is policy-shaping, work-life balance is significantly better than industry, and the résumé value is exceptional. Ex-HTA reviewers are heavily recruited into senior pharma roles after three to five years, frequently at one full rung above the level they would have reached inside pharma directly.
Ex-regulator HEOR consultant
An EMA, MHRA, or FDA alumnus who pivots into HEOR brings a perspective on the regulator–payer interface that almost no career HEOR person has. These hires often come in at Director or above on day one. The route requires an existing regulatory career, but it is worth flagging because it explains the otherwise mysterious senior hires who appear to have parachuted in at the top.
Specialist boutique partner
A handful of small consultancies — typically 10–40 people — specialise in single capabilities such as modelling, MAIC / NMA, or NICE submissions. Partner-level roles at these boutiques can match or exceed senior pharma compensation, with the trade-off that the consultancy is your career — you cannot easily move sideways. Worth knowing exists; not the safest career bet.
Global Value Dossier writer (freelance)
Senior HEOR writers with an in-house pharma background can build a freelance practice writing GVDs at day rates of £1,000–£1,500 in the UK, $1,500–$2,500 in the US. Surprisingly common move post-Director, particularly for people who want to step off the management ladder without losing income. The constraint is pipeline — most freelance dossier writers source 60–80% of their work from two or three former-employer relationships in the first 18 months.
WHY THESE ROLES ARE UNDERPRICED
Three reasons. (1) They don't appear on standard recruiter searches because the titles vary. (2) The people who hold them rarely advertise the compensation. (3) Lateral moves into them require either a non-obvious credential (HTA experience, regulatory background) or the social capital to start a freelance practice — neither of which scales. Asymmetric information is what keeps the pay good.
Where to look right now.
Specialist recruiters
In HEOR, the recruiter is often the gatekeeper for an entire pharma's external hiring. A single warm conversation — not application — with one of the names below usually produces more shortlist placements over a 12-month window than fifty cold applications.
| Firm | Specialism / why worth knowing |
|---|---|
| Pharma Search Limited (Grant Coren)pharma-search.co.uk UKGlobalAll-levelsPerm | UK-headquartered, deep coverage of HEOR / Market Access / Medical Affairs. Featured on the podcast — see embed in §09 below. |
| Mantell Associatesmantellassociates.com UKUSMid–Senior | London / Miami headhunter with dedicated HEOR, Market Access and Commercial Strategy desk. Mid-level to C-suite. |
| Carrot Recruitment (formerly Carrot Pharma)carrotrecruitment.com UKAll-levels | UK specialist with named Market Access / HEOR / RWE desk. Strong on consultancy and pharma client hires. |
| Proclinicalproclinical.com/heor-market-access-recruitment GlobalAll-levelsPermContract | Top global HEOR / Market Access desk covering UK, Germany, US and APAC. Perm and contract. |
| NonStop Consultingnonstopconsulting.com EUDACHAll-levels | Multilingual European life-sciences agency. Useful for cross-border DACH and EU market access roles. |
| RBW Consultingrbwconsulting.com UKEUUSAll-levels | B-Corp life-sciences search firm with established Market Access / HEOR practice across UK, EU, and US. |
| Barrington Jamesbarringtonjames.com GlobalUSMid–Senior | Dedicated Market Access / HEOR / RWE desk with strong US and consulting placements. |
| Blackfield Associatesblackfieldassociates.com UKUSEUSenior+ | UK / US / EU HEOR specialism since 2017. Boutique with high senior-hire conversion. |
| Planet Pharmaplanet-pharma.com USMid–Senior | US-headquartered with strong East-Coast biotech HEOR coverage. |
| Hyper Recruitment Solutionshyperec.com UKAll-levels | UK life-sciences specialist (Ricky Martin / Lord Sugar). HEOR sits within broader scientific desk. |
| Clinical Professionalsclinicalprofessionals.co.uk UKAll-levelsPermContract | UK agency with dedicated Market Access and Health Economics team. Perm and contract. |
| i-Pharm Consultingi-pharmconsulting.com GlobalAll-levelsPermContract | HEOR / Market Access sits in the Commercial team. UK, EU, and US offices. |
| Skills Allianceskillsalliance.com GlobalMSP / RPO | Global RPO / MSP / search firm with US, UK, EU offices. Life-sciences workforce solutions. |
| Real Staffing (SThree pharma division)realstaffing.com GlobalAll-levelsContract | Global STEM staffing arm of SThree. HEOR / Market Access within pharma and biotech desk. |
Job boards and direct employer pages
Useful for monitoring what's out there and triangulating compensation, less useful as the place you actually apply. Most of these surfaces will not get your CV onto a shortlist — the recruiters listed above will. The exception is direct employer pages where you have an inside referral; in that case applying directly with a named referrer often outperforms the recruiter route.
| Resource | What's on it |
|---|---|
| ISPOR Career Centerispor.org/get-involved/career-center SocietyGlobalHEOR-native | The HEOR-native job board run by ISPOR. Pharma, consultancy, academic and HTA postings worldwide. |
| HTAi Early Career Networkhtai.org/interest-group/ecn SocietyGlobalNetworking | HTAi does not run a dedicated job board, but its Early Career Network is the strongest entry point into the HTA community for newer practitioners — events, mentoring, peer connections. |
| PharmiWeb.Jobspharmiweb.jobs/jobs/heor Job boardGlobalPharma | Largest dedicated pharma job board for HEOR / market access. UK, Europe, US filters. |
| EuropeanHealthEconomics.comeuropeanhealtheconomics.com Job boardEUNiche | Niche board run by health economists for health economists. Strong EU coverage including Germany. |
| NICE careersnice.org.uk/careers HTA agencyUK | UK HTA body roles — technical analysts, health economists, scientific advisors. Manchester / London. |
| IQWiG careersiqwig.de/en/about-us/jobs HTA agencyGermany | German HTA agency in Cologne. Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter, AMNOG and health economics roles. |
| G-BA Stellenangeboteg-ba.de HTA agencyGermany | Berlin-based decision-maker for SHI benefits. Referenten Arzneimittel and health-scientist roles. |
| ICER careersicer.org/who-we-are/people/careers HTA agencyUS | US value-assessment body, Boston. HTA Fellowship plus research economist and policy roles. |
| LinkedIn (boolean search)linkedin.com/jobs Job boardGlobalDIY search | Boolean: ("HEOR" OR "Health Economics" OR "Market Access" OR "HTA" OR "RWE") AND (Manager OR Director). Set geo alerts. |
| Nature Careersnature.com/naturecareers Job boardGlobalAcademic | Academic and industry research roles. Useful for postdoc and HEOR research-scientist positions. |
| Pfizer careerspfizer.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com Direct employerBig-PharmaGlobal | US big-five HEOR hiring hub. |
| Johnson & Johnsoncareers.jnj.com/jobs Direct employerBig-PharmaGlobal | US big-five HEOR hiring hub. |
| Merck (US) / MSD (ex-US)jobs.merck.com · jobs.msd.com Direct employerBig-PharmaGlobal | Split branding: Merck for US / Canada, MSD elsewhere. |
| Bristol Myers Squibbcareers.bms.com Direct employerBig-PharmaGlobal | US big-five HEOR / WW Value & Access hiring hub. |
| Eli Lillycareers.lilly.com Direct employerBig-PharmaGlobal | US big-five HEOR / Global Patient Outcomes hiring hub. |
| Gilead 👋gilead.com/careers Direct employerMirko's old employerGlobal | Mirko's old employer — genuinely a great place to work. If you apply, say hi from me 😊. |
HOW TO ACTUALLY USE THIS LIST
The first two weeks are a window. Use them well.
Most new hires spend the grace period trying to impress. Fast wins, polished first deliverables, eager visibility. That works — first impressions stick, and the people on your team will form their opinion of you faster than feels fair. But there's an alternative that compounds harder over the long run, especially in fields like HEOR where deep context matters and you'll be carrying it for years.
Two ways to spend the grace window, both legitimate:
Option AFast start
Work harder than the team expects. Ship a polished first deliverable inside week 2. Get visible to the senior people. The reputation you build in the first month often carries you for the rest of the first year — first impressions are sticky, both up and laterally. This is what most people do, and it can absolutely work.
Option BSide-quest hard
Use the no-expectations window to do all the things you won't have time for later. Read every NICE submission your team has filed in the last three years. Map every stakeholder relationship in the room. Identify the two or three people who do 80% of the technical work and quietly start absorbing how they think. Build the context that compounds for years afterwards.
The framing is from The Prime Time YouTube channel (and explored deeply in Ludwig's essay on becoming competitive when joining a new company). It was written for software engineers, but the underlying mechanics transfer almost perfectly to HEOR.
Three side-quests that compound for HEOR specifically
Every HEOR org has 2–4 people who do most of the technical heavy lifting — the modeller everyone consults on Markov edge cases, the writer who quietly drafts the difficult dossier sections, the strategist whose name appears in every "we need a view on this" email thread. Identify them. Stalk their work product. Find an excuse to collaborate. Within six months of doing this consistently, you will know more about how the team actually functions than 90% of your peers, and the wizards will start to know your name — which is the foundation of every senior promotion conversation that follows.
The NICE submissions, the AMNOG dossiers, the value briefs, the strategy decks. Most teams have a SharePoint or shared drive that quietly accumulates institutional memory — and almost nobody under five years' tenure has read more than 5% of it. In your grace window you have permission to disappear into the archive. Three months later you have the second-deepest knowledge of the team's history of anyone in the room. That kind of asymmetric context is the rarest thing in HEOR.
A clean template for indirect treatment comparisons. A reproducible scoping document for new HTA submissions. A maintained "what NICE has accepted for X" reference. Pick something small that the team is repeatedly rebuilding from scratch and build the reusable version. It costs you a week and it shows up in every relevant project for the next two years — with your name attached. The compounding is unreal.
Whichever option you pick — Option A or Option B — the meta-point is to be deliberate about how you spend the window. The default mode (turning up, doing the work in front of you, hoping it all works out) wastes the most valuable resource a new role gives you: a few weeks of complete freedom to invest where it matters most.
What's next.
Just published
The policy that is redrawing the economics of the global pharmaceutical industry, covered end to end: the executive order, the 17 manufacturer deals, the tariffs, the three CMS models, the IRA, and what all of it does to European launches. 39 pages, 46 minutes, free to read in full.
Read the MFN report →Every report, live and planned, is on the Industry Reports page. You can also vote there on which report we write next.
Coming next
A free, interactive tool that maps the core capabilities every HEOR professional needs, shows where you stand today, and lays out a personalised, step-by-step path to close the gaps — the practical companion to the skill ladder in Section 06.
Open the HEOR Roadmap →An LLM-enabled search interface over every NICE technology appraisal ever published. Ask in natural language ("what evidence did NICE accept for survival extrapolation in mNSCLC submissions?") and get back synthesised, cited summaries with links to source documents. Starting with NICE; AMNOG and ICER coverage planned for later releases.
The structured, entry-level course for professionals who work around HEOR: market access, pricing, medical affairs, RWE and consulting. Twelve modules from first principles to how payers in the UK, Germany, the EU and the US actually decide, as self-paced video plus live Q&A. Early access is live now at £1,150 (ex VAT) until 31 December 2026, instead of the standard £1,400.
Explore the course →🎓Enrol in HEOR Fundamentals: early access is live
Go from working around HEOR to actually understanding it. Self-paced video plus live Q&A. You start today with every module released so far, and you get each new module as it is released. The early-access price is £1,150 (ex VAT) until 31 December 2026. After that, the price is £1,400.
→ Enrol now and start todayWHILE YOU WAIT — JOIN PHARMA RADAR
Pharma Radar is the weekly newsletter for working HEOR, market access, and HTA professionals. Edition releases, methods deep-dives, salary updates, and the occasional industry hot take.
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tidycal.com/mirkovonheinconsulting →A request — help us reach Edition 2027
If this report helped you, two things would make Edition 2027 better. First: forward it to one colleague who would find it useful. Second: when next year's community survey lands in your inbox, take the four minutes to fill it out. Every additional respondent makes the salary tables sharper for the next person reading them.
Methodology & sources.
Data sources
The figures in this report triangulate three independent classes of compensation data, with the relative weight of each adjusted by role and country.
1. Published recruiter benchmarks
- Mantell Associates Life Sciences Salary commentary (most recent edition).
- ProClinical Life Sciences Hiring Report 2025.
- EPM Scientific Commercial / Market Access Salary Guide 2024 / 25.
- PharmaDiversity Pharma Salary Guide 2025.
- Carrot Recruitment Market Access career commentary.
2. Aggregated open-source data
- Glassdoor self-reported total compensation — UK, Germany, US — filtered to HEOR, Health Economist, Market Access, and Associate Director HEOR titles. Both general and employer-specific pages (AbbVie, Novartis, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Takeda, Bayer, Costello Medical, IQVIA).
- Salary.com, SalaryExpert / ERI, ZipRecruiter, 6figr, Indeed, PayScale, Paylab — used as triangulation against Glassdoor.
- levels.fyi 2025 End-of-Year Pay Report — for US in-house pharma equity-inclusive data.
3. Industry-specific sources
- HealthEconomics.com 2024 and 2025 HEOR & Market Access Global Salary Survey (executive summary / preview material).
- PMC / Value in Health — "Predictors of Annual Base Salary for HEOR and Market Access Professionals" (2023, used for cross-validation only).
- Public proxy filings (DEF 14A / annual reports) for FY2024 C-suite comp at Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Merck, AstraZeneca, Roche, GSK, Sanofi, Novartis, BMS.
How divergent sources were reconciled
Where two or more sources agreed to within ~10%, the midpoint was used. Where divergence exceeded 25%, employer-specific data (AbbVie, Novartis, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Takeda postings) was used as the tiebreaker, and the spread is disclosed in the footnotes under each salary table. Where a source reported base only, total compensation was inferred using conventional pharma bonus targets — approximately 10–15% at Manager, 20–30% at Director, 30–50%+ at VP — and US equity bands of roughly 10–20% of base at Manager, 20–30% at Associate Director, 30–50% at Director, and 50–100% at VP (vested over three to four years).
Treatment of currencies
All figures are reported in local currency, gross of tax. We deliberately do not report a single "global" band because local tax and cost-of-living differentials make any unified figure misleading.
What this report does not claim
- It is not a substitute for an offer letter.
- It does not adjust for cost of living within countries (London vs Manchester, NY-NJ vs Indianapolis, Munich vs Hannover).
- It does not capture the smallest specialist boutiques whose compensation structures are too idiosyncratic to benchmark.
- UK Level 06 (Senior Director / VP) cells are estimates triangulated from US benchmarks and explicitly flagged as such — the public data is genuinely thin at this seniority.
- Level 07 (C-suite) cells are illustrative reference points from named individuals in FY2024 proxy filings — not a percentile band. Treat as context for the magnitude of the very top, not as a planning target.
- It is a baseline. Use it as a baseline.
Coming for Edition 2027 — primary survey
Edition 2027 will add a primary anonymous survey of working HEOR professionals fielded across the Pharma Radar newsletter, the Mirko von Hein YouTube community, and the wider ISPOR / HTAi community. If you would like to be sent the 4-minute survey when it opens — and receive a personalised benchmark of your own role against the responses — join Pharma Radar at pharmaradar.beehiiv.com.
Methodological transparency
Every figure cited in the salary tables is traceable to at least two public sources or one employer-specific posting. If you spot a number you believe is wrong — particularly in a cell where you have first-hand information — please email [email protected]. We aim to publish a revised methodology note within four weeks of any substantive correction.
Full reference list
Every source URL used in compiling the salary tables, grouped by class. Verify any cell yourself — that is the point.
HEOR-specific salary surveys
- HealthEconomics.com — HEOR & Market Access Global Salary Survey 2025
- HealthEconomics.com — HEOR & Market Access Global Salary Survey 2024
- PMC / Value in Health — Predictors of Annual Base Salary for HEOR / Market Access Professionals
Recruiter benchmarks & industry guides
- Mantell Associates — Life Science Consulting practice
- ProClinical — Life Sciences Hiring Report 2025
- PharmaDiversity — Pharma Salary Guide 2025
Aggregated salary platforms
- Glassdoor — multiple UK / DE / US HEOR-specific pages and employer-specific pages (AbbVie, Novartis, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Takeda, Bayer, Costello Medical, IQVIA).
- SalaryExpert / ERI — Health Economist / Market Access Manager / Director Pharmacy / Medical Affairs Director, UK + Germany.
- Salary.com — Associate Director HEOR / Market Access Director US.
- ZipRecruiter — HEOR Manager / Analyst US bands.
- 6figr — Associate Director HEOR US.
- PayScale — Pharma R&D Germany.
- Paylab — Pharma industry Germany.
- Bench International — top biotech / pharma median salaries (175 companies).