2025 State
of TechBio
The 2025 State of TechBio Survey aims to provide data to those who want to improve the software and tools used in the field. We hope that the community will discover insights on attitudes, tools, and environments influencing science and software today.
Feedback
We welcome feedback! Please reach out to Shaq Vayda with your suggestions. For any technical issues or feedback concerning this website, please reach out to survey@nitro.bio.
YoY Trends
2024 → 2025Model Usage Shifts
"Build in-house" AI has cooled off, while Claude surged into the top tier of day-to-day model usage.
Claude+28 pts
′24
32%
′25
60%
Proprietary / in-house-16 pts
′24
60%
′25
44%
OpenAI family+10 pts
′24
52%
′25
62%
More Hands-On Technical
The field is becoming more hands-on technical—daily ML and daily tool-building both jumped.
Daily ML work+13 pts
′24
15%
′25
28%
Never ML-11 pts
′24
25%
′25
14%
Daily dev tools/libraries+12 pts
′24
16%
′25
28%
Sentiment Turned Cautious
The "very bullish" camp shrank while bearishness rose meaningfully.
Very bullish-11 pts
′24
20%
′25
9%
Somewhat bearish+12 pts
′24
15%
′25
27%
Survey Results are
grouped into 4 sections:
BiB Community
BiB is a word-of-mouth, Slack-first network: people join through people, and most value comes from the always-on community, room to continue to increase participation
- •68% of you discovered BiB via word of mouth (vs 11% meetups, 8% LinkedIn)
- •66% say Slack is BiB's most useful offering (vs 47% in-person meetups, 37% job board)
- •Though engagement today is mostly "drop-in": 37% visit weekly/a few times per month (vs 11% daily)
How did you hear about Bits in Bio?
194 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Through word of mouth (a colleague or friend)
68%
Bits in Bio meetup
11%
LinkedIn
8%
Twitter
6%
Search Engine
6%
I hadn't heard about Bits in Bio before
2%
How frequently would you say you go on the Bits in Bio Slack Channel during a typical month?
200 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
A few times per month or weekly
37%
Less than once per month or monthly
25%
A few times per week
19%
Daily or almost daily
11%
Never
6%
Multiple times per day
3%
Which part of Bits in Bio do you find most useful?
202 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Slack community
66%
In-Person Meetups
47%
Job Board / Channel
37%
BiB Newsletter
24%
Q&As
13%
Do you consider yourself a member of the Bits in Bio community?
202 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Yes, somewhat
50%
No, not really
27%
Yes, definitely
20%
No, not at all
2%
Not sure
1%
Professional Experience
TechBio talent is a blended market: overwhelmingly industry-based, strongly computational, and split between early-stage startups and bigger-orgs
- •82% are in (or seeking) industry roles (vs 18% academia)
- •Top roles skew compute: 35% Comp Bio/Bioinformatics, 24% Data Scientist, 21% Software Engineer, 20% ML Eng/Researcher
- •Org size is barbelled: 35% at 2–19 employees, while 17% are at 5,000+
Do you consider yourself to be working (or seeking work) in industry or academia?
194 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Industry
82%
Academia
18%
Which of the following best describes your current employment status?
206 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Employed Full time
71%
Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed
12%
PhD-student or post-doc
7%
Student, full-time
3%
Not employed, but looking for work
3%
What sources do you use to keep up to date in your field?
206 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
LinkedIn
74%
Bits in Bio Slack
61%
Biorxiv
48%
Conferences
47%
Journals
41%
Which of the following best describes your current role?
206 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Computational Biologist / Bioinformatician
35%
Data Scientist
24%
Software Engineer
21%
ML Engineer / Researcher
20%
Data Engineer
17%
What industry does your organization operate in?
206 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Biotech / Pharma
65%
Software / Information Technology
29%
Academia
29%
Basic / Fundamental research
17%
Diagnostics
11%
Approximately how many people are employed by the company or organization you currently work for?
206 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
2 - 19 employees
35%
5,000 or more employees
17%
20-99 employees
17%
100-499 employees
14%
500- 4,999 employees
11%
Just me - I am a freelancer, sole proprietor, etc.
7%
Which of the following best describes your current role/years of experience?
175 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Individual Contributor (3-7 years of experience)
21%
Founder
16%
Individual Contributor (7-15 years of experience)
14%
Individual Contributor (1-3 years of experience)
13%
Director
10%
What annual salary range do you fall into?
197 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Prefer not to answer
16%
$110,000-$140,000
14%
$260,000+
12%
$170,000-$200,000
12%
$140,000-$170,000
11%
Technical Experience
LLMs have become the default work surface in TechBio: most respondents touch ML, and the most common "ML win" is accelerating human workflows (coding + knowledge search) as much as modeling biology.
- •67% say their work has involved ML (+ 23% curious but not yet)
- •Most common ML objective: 65% use ML for writing code (vs 40% literature search; 32% target identification/selection)
- •Tooling is LLM-led: OpenAI 62% and Claude 60% among those regularly working with ML models
Which persona do you most identify with?
202 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
You primarily write code within a biotech / pharma
42%
You primarily write code, but not in a biotech / pharma
19%
None of the above
19%
You work in a biotech / pharma, but mostly do not write code (e.g. majority wet lab)
11%
You work in a biotech / pharma, do wet lab experiments, and also do a modest amount of coding
8%
Has your work involved machine learning?
206 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Yes
67%
Not yet - but I'm curious to explore machine learning in the future
23%
No
10%
Which of the following machine learning models do you regularly work with?
129 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
OpenAI (GPT-5, o1…)
62%
Claude
60%
Proprietary / In-house models
44%
Gemini
44%
AlphaFold
35%
Which of the following design objectives do you regularly work on using machine learning?
136 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Writing code
65%
Literature search
40%
Target identification / selection
32%
Library / in silico screening
24%
Automation
23%
Has your work involved lab automation?
206 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
No
37%
Yes
32%
Not yet - but I'm curious to explore lab automation in the future
31%
Which lab equipment vendors do you regularly work with?
54 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Illumina (e.g. NovaSeq, MiSeq, NextSeq)
57%
Thermo Fisher (e.g. Sorvall, Heracell, Applied Bio)
44%
Agilent Technologies (e.g. InfinityLab, Intelliq)
43%
Hamilton (e.g. Microlab, Verso, NIMBUS)
43%
Oxford Nanopore (ONT)
37%
Which of the following design objectives do you regularly work on using lab automation?
58 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Data Acquisition and Analysis
57%
High-Throughput Screening
57%
Liquid Handling and Pipetting
47%
Sample Preparation and Extraction (e.g. dilution, mixing, extraction)
47%
Molecular Biology Workflows (e.g. PCR, sequencing)
38%
Do you code?
206 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Yes - I am comfortable writing code
69%
No - I don't write code
19%
Some - I modify other people's code, but rarely start from scratch.
11%
Which of the following languages do you use day-to-day?
162 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Python
93%
Shell (Bash / PowerShell/etc)
57%
R
42%
SQL
40%
TypeScript
17%
How often do you personally do data analysis for work?
166 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Daily
50%
Weekly
25%
Monthly
13%
Rarely
10%
Never
1%
How often do you personally write or work on data engineering/bioinformatics pipelines for work?
166 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Daily
36%
Weekly
31%
Rarely
15%
Monthly
14%
Never
3%
Which of the following frameworks do you use (if any) for your data engineering tasks?
153 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
None
38%
Nextflow
33%
Snakemake
19%
Other
15%
Airflow
9%
How often do you personally develop on developer-facing tools/libraries for work?
165 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Daily
28%
Never
23%
Rarely
20%
Weekly
17%
Monthly
12%
How often do you personally develop on scientist-facing tools or interfaces?
166 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Daily
27%
Rarely
21%
Weekly
19%
Never
17%
Monthly
16%
How often do you personally do machine learning for work?
166 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Daily
28%
Rarely
23%
Monthly
17%
Weekly
17%
Never
14%
Which of the following machine learning tools (frameworks, libraries, models, etc) do you work with?
134 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Scikit-Learn
67%
Pytorch
64%
OpenAI
41%
HuggingFace
38%
Anthropic
32%
How often do you personally program web interfaces for work?
166 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Never
37%
Rarely
25%
Weekly
13%
Monthly
13%
Daily
12%
Which databases have you worked with extensively?
153 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
PostgreSQL
42%
SQLite
36%
Not relevant to me - I don't work with databases
31%
MySQL
29%
DuckDB
16%
Which cloud platforms have you extensively developed with?
166 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
AWS
67%
Google Cloud Platform
34%
Not relevant to me - I don't work with cloud platforms
19%
Microsoft Azure
16%
Other
5%
Which of the following data sources do you use extensively?
206 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Literature
39%
Not relevant to me - I don't work with such data sources
34%
Uniprot
33%
DDBJ / EMBL-EBI/NCBI
24%
RCSB / PDB
23%
When you are using data from another source, what formats does it come in (input data)?
206 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
CSV / TSV
71%
FASTA
50%
JSON
49%
Excel
46%
FASTQ
38%
When you are storing data for analysis or later use which formats do you use (output data)?
206 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
CSV / TSV
57%
JSON
37%
Parquet
29%
Excel
20%
FASTA
19%
What tools and libraries do you use to visualise data?
206 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Matplotlib
47%
Plotly
36%
Excel
28%
Ggplot
25%
Google Sheets
24%
Which of the following lab information management systems and electronic lab notebooks do you use?
206 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Not relevant to me - I don't work with LIMS / ELN
55%
Benchling
33%
Other
9%
CDD
3%
Revvity Signals
3%
Respondent Demographics
BiB is a highly educated, coastal-US respondent base that's "cautiously mixed" on market outlook—but shows strong advocacy via high recommendation scores.
- •Geography is concentrated: 79% US; within US, 49% CA and 22% MA
- •Education is very advanced: 45% PhD/doctoral, 31% master's
- •Sentiment is mixed-tilt-bullish: 33% somewhat bullish, 27% somewhat bearish, 25% neutral
How old are you?
206 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
25-35
43%
35-45
30%
45-60
16%
18-25
8%
Prefer to not answer
2%
60+
1%
Which of the following, if at all, best describes you?
206 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Man
61%
Woman
32%
Prefer not to say
5%
Genderqueer, or gender non-conforming
2%
Non-binary
1%
What country do you live in?
206 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
United States
79%
Canada
4%
United Kingdom
3%
Germany
3%
Switzerland
2%
What state do you live in?
162 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
California
49%
Massachusetts
22%
Washington
6%
New York
4%
North Carolina
2%
Which of the following, if at all, best describes you? (Ethnicity)
206 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
White
46%
Asian
15%
Prefer not to say
11%
European
10%
Indian
7%
Which of the following best describes the highest level of formal education that you've completed?
206 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Other doctoral degree (Ph.D., Ed.D., etc.)
45%
Master’s degree (M.A., M.S., M.Eng., MBA, etc.)
31%
Bachelor’s degree (B.A., B.S., B.Eng., etc.)
20%
Professional degree (JD, MD, etc.)
2%
Some college / university study without earning a degree
2%
Secondary school (e.g. American high school, German Realschule or Gymnasium, etc.)
0%
How do you feel about the broader biotech market in the near future?
206 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
Somewhat bullish
33%
Somewhat bearish
27%
Neutral
25%
Very bullish
9%
Very bearish
5%
Would you recommend Bits in Bio to a friend?
196 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
10
24%
8
21%
7
17%
9
17%
6
9%
Are you curious to learn more about biology or the biotech space, and if so, what are the questions you have?
186 Respondents0%20%40%60%80%100%
What are the big problems worth tackling in the field?
56%
What is the landscape of each of these problem space?
43%
Who can I talk to when I have questions in this field?
40%
What are the helpful resources I can leverage to start learning about this field?
37%
What are the possible roles within this field?
30%