You’re a chemical engineer, postdoctoral fellow or biostatistician. San Diego biotech companies want you. Trained bioscience professionals are in great demand locally, as San Diego County’s biotechnology scene continues to expand. By nearly any measure, job prospects are bright.

Local biotech companies expect to add 15 percent to their total workforce of more than 23,000 employees from mid-2001 to mid-2002, according to a survey by the San Diego Workforce Partnership. The study was performed by the Carlsbad office of Godbe Research & Analysis.

The survey found the fastest projected employment growth in any category is for a biotech specialty: chemical engineer. Companies predicted a 120 percent increase in the number of chemical engineers employed locally within a year.

Although the survey questions were asked before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the outlook for biotech remains strong, says Terri Bergman, research director for the workforce partnership. For example, the need for bioterrorism defenses plays into the strengths of local biotech firms.

Biotech companies for the most part continue to lose money as they invest in research and development. However, they continue to make progress in developing drugs and treatments. That progress keeps the money flowing in, which means biotechs can ramp up their staffs.

Biotech investing, while not profligate Internet-style, remains relatively strong, and the area is attracting more venture capital all the time.

In November, a $100 million biotechnology venture capital fund moved to San Diego. Hans-Peter Bissinger, managing partner of the Novartis BioVenture Fund, says his investment pool relocated to La Jolla from Basel, Switzerland, to tap into the area’s expertise and be close to other institutes in the Novartis family. (Bissinger can be reached at (858) 587-2588, or 11099 N. Torrey Pines Road, Ste. 200, La Jolla, 92037.)

Two other Novartis-formed but independent institutes already are in La Jolla: the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation and the Torrey Mesa Research Institute. Those institutes, and California’s combination of biotech prowess and information technology expertise, made the state preferable as a headquarters to an East Coast location, Bissinger says.

Ivor Royston, a veteran San Diego biotech venture capitalist, sees abundant signs that local innovation in life sciences continues to grow. Royston co-founded San Diego’s first biotech, Hybritech Inc., more than 20 years ago, with another biotech veteran, Nanogen CEO Howard Birndorf. Royston is a managing member of Forward Ventures, a San Diego-based venture firm with $310 million under management.

“There’s no slowdown in innovation; in fact we continue to see an acceleration of really, really good ideas,” Royston says. “We’ve seen a host of new ideas spinning out of the Genomics Institute of the Novartis (Research) Foundation.”

Novartis, a Swiss-based pharmaceutical company, committed $250 million in 1998 to build the institute on Torrey Pines Mesa in La Jolla, near the Torrey Mesa Research Institute. That new source of innovation adds to the area’s traditional biomedical research centers at the Salk Institute, the Scripps Research Institute and UC San Diego. We can’t even fund all the things we’re interested in.”

The Sept. 11 attacks have made it more difficult to raise money from public stock offerings, Royston said. That reduces the value of later-stage life science companies that could go public, because late-stage investors don’t know when they’ll get their money back through an offering.

“What that means is we have to be very cautious when we fund companies,” Royston says. “We have to make sure there are adequate reserves to carry our companies as they achieve their milestones and not be expecting a public offering.”

This money enables biotech and pharmaceutical companies to pay very attractive salaries — along with the incalculable benefit of living in San Diego.

Wages for research scientists with doctorates and some postdoctoral experience can reach $70,000 to $80,000, says Angela Wallace, an executive recruiter for Search Masters International, a unit of Kelly Scientific. Search Masters International recently opened a West Coast office in San Diego. The company specializes in recruiting executives and scientists for the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.

Other drug and biotech companies hiring locally include Pfizer, a giant drug company that owns San Diego’s Agouron Pharmaceuticals, and Idec Pharmaceuticals, which is building a large manufacturing plant in Oceanside.

The San Diego office of Search Masters handles recruiting for biotech and pharmaceutical companies from San Diego to as far north as Seattle and as far east as Denver.

“San Diego is a better draw” than many other West Coast cities, Wallace says. “It’s easier for me as a recruiter to attract them to San Diego than to L.A. or Seattle, particularly Seattle, because they hear the name and they think rain.”

— Bradley J. Fikes