How to Progress your

Pharmaceutical Quality Assurance

Career

What is Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC)?

Quality Assurance and Quality Control are key components of Quality Management. The responsibility of professionals within both functions is to make sure there are no deficiencies within the processes used to develop a product and that the product itself is safe for consumption.

Although the roles and responsibilities of QA and QC professionals can overlap, there is a key distinction between the two.  The responsibilities of Quality Assurance professionals involve compliance and regulation documentation, auditing, and process management. Typically, roles within QA are office-based. In contrast, Quality Control professionals deal with the physical product. Roles within QC are usually lab or manufacturing site based.

Typical Quality roles

Typical roles within Pharmaceutical Quality Management sector are:

• QA / QC Officer, Executive or Associate
• QA Assistant
• QA / QC Management,
• Director or Head of Department

How can you progress your Pharmaceutical Quality Assurance Career?

If you are looking to progress your career within Pharmaceutical Quality Assurance, you’ll need to have fantastic communication and technical skills and have confidence in your ability.

In addition to these characteristics, you’ll need to complete additional tasks to help take your career to the next level:

1. Obtain a Degree in a Relevant Field of Study

    

   
   Obtaining a degree within a relevant field of study is hugely beneficial for your career progression. Ideally, companies look for candidates who have a science/ pharmaceutical based degree. However, relevant fields of study can range from microbiology and chemistry to business admin.

2. Gather relevant industry experience

    

   
   Entry-level candidates starting their career will be able to increase their knowledge of the industry significantly within a relatively short period of time as they will be given exposure to working on QMS, CAPA’s, deviations, batch release, risk assessments and root cause analysis duties.
   They will also learn various regulations that fall under the GxP depending on the sector. These cover manufacturing, clinical and distribution practices.

   A career in Quality gives the exciting opportunity to develop and train in new areas. This could include auditing (internal, external, supplier, leading and hosting inspections), RP and QP training (this is relative to batch release of a product and final sign off). These are high-level roles, but additional courses are on offer in some companies to get to this stage, so those who thrive on learning and development would advance well in a career in Quality.

3. To be successful within this line of work you’ll also need to be confident, sociable and have excellent communications skills as you’ll be dealing with external stakeholders regularly.
4. A key trait to have to work within the Pharma Quality Assurance sector is adaptability. As you’ll be exposed to several different businesses and their products, it will be a requirement of yours to use your initiative and change your approach to working to tackle any new situations you may face.