Compensation is the first question most clinicians have and the hardest one to get a straight answer to. Rather than publish numbers that would be wrong in half the world and stale within a year, this explains what drives your number and how to find a reliable figure for your own market.
Industry pay is a package: base salary, an annual bonus expressed as a percentage of base, and often equity. In large pharma the bonus commonly runs from the low teens to the mid twenties as a percentage; in biotech, base may be lower while equity carries the upside. Comparing a clinical salary to an industry base alone will mislead you badly.
Across most markets, roles requiring a medical degree and direct clinical judgement — medical director, safety physician, medical monitor — sit at the top. Field-based medical affairs follows. Regulatory affairs, safety science and medical writing occupy broadly similar territory, with seniority mattering more than function once you are established.
The same role can differ several-fold between the United States, Western Europe and emerging markets. Cost of living, local benefits, pension and healthcare provision, and holiday entitlement all move the real value. A European package with six weeks of leave and full healthcare is not the number on the offer letter.
Large pharma pays more predictably with better benefits. Small biotech may pay less in cash and more in equity, which is worth either a great deal or precisely nothing. If you take equity, understand your strike price, vesting schedule and what happens on acquisition before you sign.
Many physicians take a lateral or slightly lower first offer to enter industry, then move above their clinical income within a few years as they level up. Judge the move on the trajectory rather than the entry number — and remember that call, weekends and the sheer physical cost of clinical work are part of what you are trading away.
Use several sources and expect them to disagree: professional-body salary surveys for your function, aggregate salary sites for your city and title, recruiters who place in your market, and — most reliably — people doing the job where you live. Always ask about total compensation and the bonus target, not base alone.
A note on why there are no tables here: published salary figures age quickly, vary enormously between markets, and are frequently wrong for the exact combination of function, level and country you care about. Being useful matters more than looking authoritative.