3 years
When I was employed as a Statistician in AstraZeneca 3 years ago, I didn’t know much about the pharmaceutical industry. I had just obtained my Master’s degree in Applied Statistics from Örebro University (Sweden) and my previous work experience in statistics was from part-time jobs in the field of economics, medicine and social studies. During my first year in AstraZeneca, I was mainly doing exploratory work to inform study design and assess the robustness of results from finished studies. This helped me to get familiar with the industry processes and what stands behind the clinical programmes design, regulatory submissions and commercialisation. Gradually, I gained more independence and responsibilities in designing studies, deciding on analysis approaches and communicating with external partners. I was promoted to a Senior Statistician after 2 years of working, which is my current role.
I would typically have 1-3 meetings a day with colleagues such as physicians, safety experts, data management experts, statistical programmers, medical writers and other study and project team members as well as external vendors and partners.
I would review project documents or outputs from vendors or team members or would work on drafting and finalizing internal documents or outputs. I would produce analyses for internal use or would do literature research for incorporating the best analyses approach in our study design.
I am doing something different every day and constantly developing different technical and soft skills. There are so many different sub-areas that a statistician can work on within a pharmaceutical company that it is easy to find something that you enjoy or explore other areas if you want to try something new. I also like the sense of importance in the work my colleagues and I do and cannot help but feel proud for contributing to the development of new and better medicines for patients.
