How To Become A Medicinal Chemist: What It Is and Career Path

What is a medicinal chemist and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted expert

Dr. Betsy Smith

A medicinal chemist researches, discovers, and develops new drugs. They typically work in biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies alongside biologists, pharmacologists, toxicologists, and other scientists to produce drug formulations to treat target illnesses.

Their tasks include the application of synthetic organic chemistry to screen, select, and synthesize compounds while following safety and health guidelines. Their work hours are usually spent on research, lab experiments, reports, and presentations, ensuring the accuracy and effectiveness of the pharmaceuticals they are developing. With advancements in organic chemistry, they need to stay updated with the scientific and pharmaceutical industries' recent discoveries.

A bachelor's degree in chemistry is the basic educational requirement for this career. However, employers prefer candidates with a doctoral degree in chemistry or pharmacy. Relevant experience and background in research are also considerable factors to land this job. A medicinal chemist earns about $28.6 in an hour, which is equivalent to an annual salary of $59,497.

What general advice would you give to a medicinal chemist?

Dr. Betsy Smith

Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Elmira College

I would advise students just graduating to be flexible and open-minded in their job search. Chemistry is a challenging major, and students who succeed in it have learned how to learn, so they shouldn't assume that pure chemistry is the only thing they can do. One growing field is biomedical research, and chemistry majors are often qualified for jobs in that area. If you have other strengths like writing, there are often jobs that can combine them as a technical writer or work for a science journal. There are jobs out there that might be perfect for you that you haven't heard of until you see an ad for it, so be open to different possibilities.

ScoreMedicinal ChemistUS Average

Salary

5.1

Avg. Salary $65,248

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

5.7

Growth rate 6%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

5.7

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.25%

Asian 26.82%

Black or African American 6.79%

Hispanic or Latino 8.91%

Unknown 4.43%

White 52.81%

Gender

female 19.47%

male 80.53%

Age - 40

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 40

Stress level

5.7

Stress level is manageable

7.1 - high

Complexity level

10.0

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

6.2

Work life balance is fair

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a medicinal chemist

Explore medicinal chemist education requirements

Most common medicinal chemist degrees

Bachelor's

60.2 %

Doctorate

22.2 %

Master's

17.6 %

Start to develop specific medicinal chemist skills

Skills	Percentages
NMR	18.93%
SAR	14.10%
HPLC	13.90%
Organic Synthesis	10.13%
LC-MS	8.01%

Complete relevant medicinal chemist training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 1-3 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New medicinal chemists learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a medicinal chemist based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real medicinal chemist resumes.

Research medicinal chemist duties and responsibilities

Achieve expertise with hydrogenations and catalysts, low temp reactions, TLC, reactions done with UV and infrare lights.
Produce inactive analogues of drug candidates for PK/PD comparison with API compounds.
Analyze compound purity using LCMS and NMR spectroscopy.
Develop and optimize protocols on HPLC, LC-MS and other analytical instruments.

Get medicinal chemist experience

Prepare your medicinal chemist resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your medicinal chemist resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a medicinal chemist resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable medicinal chemist resume templates

Build a professional medicinal chemist resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your medicinal chemist resume.