Pharmaceutical Recruitment Agencies in Ireland: When to Hire QC, Validation and Manufacturing Staff from Overseas

Chemical, biological and physical scientists who work in manufacturing, including medical devices, are on Ireland's Critical Skills Occupations List. So are engineers who specialise in validation, and quality assurance professionals. Those jobs can use the Critical Skills Employment Permit.

Chemical process operatives, packers and routine inspectors are on the Ineligible List of Occupations for Employment Permits, so no permit is issued for them. Lab technicians sit in between, on the General Employment Permit.

The Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment (DETE) assesses employment permit applications. Its two lists give each occupation a four-digit code number. We sort a vacancy by that number, not by its job title. We see "pharmaceutical technician" used for lab jobs and for production jobs, and the two get very different answers. Below we sort pharma and med-device jobs into those three groups.

When an overseas hire makes sense

If the person you need already has the right to work in Ireland, a domestic pharma agency is the quicker answer.

Going overseas makes sense when the domestic search has stalled on a specialist role. Think of a validation engineer who knows your type of equipment, or an analytical chemist for a method transfer. For those jobs, the permit question comes first, which is why we check the occupation before you make an offer.

Pharma roles on the Critical Skills list

These codes on the Critical Skills Occupations List are the ones we see on pharma and med-device science and quality jobs:

• 2111 Chemical scientists in manufacturing (including medical devices), product development, analytical development or biotechnology, among other settings.
• 2112 Biological scientists and biochemists in the same settings, and medical laboratory scientists.
• 2113 Physical scientists in the same settings.
• 2126 and 2127 Design and development engineers, and production and process engineers, who specialise in quality control, or validation and regulation engineering (high tech industry; food and beverages). 2127 also lists chemical process engineering and chemical engineers.
• 2461 Quality control and planning engineers.
• 2462 Quality assurance and regulatory professionals.

Mechanical engineers (2122) and electrical engineers (2123) are on the list too. Our guide to hiring overseas engineers goes through those codes in more detail.

Notice the wording on 2126 and 2127. The list does not name "validation engineer" as a job title. It names validation and regulation engineering as an area the engineer specialises in. So we write the job description to show that the role is engineering work in that area, not a technician's checklist.

The Critical Skills route needs no Labour Market Needs Test. The job offer must be for at least 2 years. Our Critical Skills permit guide covers the rest of what you sign.

Lab and QC technicians: the General permit

Laboratory technicians are not on the Critical Skills list, and they are not on the Ineligible list. That leaves them on the General Employment Permit route, which treats every job as eligible unless the Ineligible list excludes it.

In practice that means two extra steps. In most cases you run a Labour Market Needs Test first. You advertise the job through JobsIreland, the Department of Social Protection's employment service. That ad also goes on EURES (European Employment Services), which advertises the vacancy across the EU. You add one more ad on another online platform, and only then apply. Then you pay at least the General permit's salary floor.

This is where "pharmaceutical technician" gets risky. We code a technician who runs tests in the QC lab as a laboratory technician. A "technician" who runs a mixing machine or a filling line we would code as a chemical process operative, and that code is on the Ineligible list. We settle the code on the duties before anyone advertises.

Operatives, packers and inspectors: no permit

The Ineligible List of Occupations names these production codes, among others:

• 8114 Chemical and related process operatives (Computer Numerical Control operatives are the one exception)
• 8131 Assemblers of electrical and electronic products
• 8133 Routine inspectors and testers
• 8139 Other assemblers and routine operatives
• 9134 Packers, bottlers and fillers

A higher salary does not fix this. DETE's own page says permits cannot be issued for jobs on the Ineligible list, "irrespective of remuneration". So a permit is not an option for jobs under those codes. Our manufacturing hiring guide goes through the production roles in more detail.

Salary floors and timelines

Each permit has its own salary floor, and the Critical Skills floor changes with the worker's qualification. Rather than repeat the figures here, our minimum salary guide keeps them in one place. Check it before you set the offer.

On timing, a Critical Skills hire has no advertising stage, because it needs no Labour Market Needs Test. Current DETE queue dates, and the stages either side of them, are in our processing times tracker.

Manufacturing experience and foreign degrees

For the permit, DETE asks that the worker has the qualifications, skills or experience the job needs. GMP stands for Good Manufacturing Practice, the minimum standard a medicines manufacturer must meet in its production. How much GMP experience to ask for is your call. Judge it the same way you would for an Irish candidate.

For degrees, check the National Academic Recognition Information Centre of Ireland (NARIC Ireland). It recognises foreign qualifications through free online statements. Each one compares a foreign qualification to an Irish qualification of a similar award type and level. NARIC Ireland calls these comparability statements. NARIC Ireland says these statements are often needed for employment or work permits. They are advice, not a legal document.

If the role is a regulated profession, recognition is a separate decision made by the Irish authority for that profession. Plan for that step before you set a start date.

What we do, and what we don't

CA Recruitment is not a specialist pharma agency. We do not hold a bank of GMP-experienced QC analysts or validation engineers, and we have not placed staff on Irish pharma sites. If you need a shortlist of pharma candidates, a specialist pharma agency will serve you better.

Where we can help is the permit. If you have found the right person overseas, through your own network or another agency, we can manage the employment permit for that hire. That starts with checking the occupation code and the salary before you make the offer. We can also tell you early when a role will not get a permit, so you don't spend months advertising a job that can't be filled from overseas.

Frequently asked questions