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Medical technology is in demand

According to one agency, one of the fastest growing industries is rewarding its top employees with some of the biggest leaps in salaries.

Compensation packages for senior positions in the medical diagnostics industry have increased significantly since the beginning of the Covid pandemic.

Some are now double what they were five years ago, says Ivor Campbell, executive director of recruitment consultancy Snedden Campbell.

Executive-level executives with technical, scientific or technical qualifications now routinely earn salaries of around £ 150,000 per year.

Experienced engineers involved in research and development as well as manufacturing are regularly employed on a salary of £ 120,000.

The sudden expansion of the UK medical device industry, particularly in infectious disease diagnostics, over the past 12 months has resulted in companies offering significantly higher wages to attract the best, according to Campbell.

He said government investment in Covid-related research and the higher public profile of the diagnostics industry resulted in the creation of several new specialist firms as well as established companies to expand their activities and product lines.

“The government has put hundreds of millions of pounds into diagnostics in the UK, and that has had several implications,” he said.

“What we are seeing is a confident sector, whether it has something to do with Covid or not, that is hiring more people, hiring people and expanding its product range.

“It has also resulted in a lack of skilled and experienced employees who really know what they are doing in the design, development and manufacture of these things. As a result, the demand for their services is growing with far fewer salaries disputes. “

Mr Campbell, whose Stirlingshire-based company recruits for the world’s largest medtech companies, said salaries through 2018 had been virtually unchanged since the 2008 financial crash.

He said, “We are now at a stage where we are receiving consistent six-digit salaries for seniors in medical diagnostics companies of all sizes. You will catch up with those in equivalent positions in the pharmaceutical, financial and information technology industries in the South East of England.

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She called for the Scottish Parliament to be given additional fiscal powers to deal with the challenges facing the Scottish economy.

“We’re working on a technical production management project that five or six years ago wages were between £ 60,000 and £ 70,000 – now between £ 100,000 and £ 120,000.

“Customers who would have hung up the phone 12 months ago are now nodding at excessive salaries because they accept that prices have risen. Engineers who made £ 120,000 a year ago would have been unlikely – now it’s the cost of doing business. “

The UK diagnostic sector appears to be growing faster than other European countries in general, with a few exceptions in Spain and Scandinavia, where it has seen an increase in activity since the beginning of the pandemic.

He added: “Since May last year, 80% of the people we hired have been with new companies that didn’t exist five years ago.

“Activities continue to be heavily focused on the MedTech clusters in Oxford, Cambridge, London, the North East and North West of England and Central Scotland.”