How to Apply to BioNTech

11 min read Last updated April 20, 2026 87 open positions
Blake Crosley
Blake Crosley Researched using publicly available information, hiring data, and ATS analysis.

Key Takeaways

  • BioNTech is hiring across a much wider surface area than its public reputation as a COVID-19 vaccine company suggests, with the largest sustained demand in oncology research, clinical operations, GMP manufacturing, quality, regulatory, IT and SAP, and the InstaDeep AI organization.
  • All applications must go through jobs.biontech.com, which runs on SAP SuccessFactors; speculative applications, LinkedIn DMs, and emails to the careers inbox will not move you forward and may not even reach a recruiter.
  • The interview loop is typically two to three rounds (recruiter, hiring manager, panel and team-fit) and is calmer and more substance-driven than at many comparable biotechs, but final decisions are consensus-based, which means the cycle can run four to eight weeks even when everyone is enthusiastic.
  • Tailor the CV to the specific posting using the exact regulatory, technical, and platform vocabulary in the job ad; SuccessFactors and the recruiter both rely on keyword fit to filter the first pass, and generic CVs underperform sharply.
  • For scientific and engineering roles, prepare a 20 to 45 minute presentation on a past project that you can defend in depth, including controls, statistics, failures, and what you would do with another six months; this is the highest-leverage piece of preparation you can do.
  • Mainz remains the gravitational center for senior R&D, leadership, and many functional roles; if you can be flexible on location or willing to relocate to Germany, your effective opportunity set roughly doubles compared to insisting on US- or UK-based remote work.
  • German language ability is not formally required for most international roles but materially helps for site-based manufacturing, quality, apprenticeship, and operations roles in Germany; even conversational German signals long-term commitment to interviewers.
  • Patient-centric framing, intellectual honesty about what failed, and visible cross-functional collaboration land better than polished generic answers; the panel is staffed by working scientists and operators who can tell the difference quickly.
  • Treat work authorization as a first-class part of your application: state your status clearly on the CV and in the recruiter call, because ambiguity here is one of the most common reasons strong candidates stall at the screening stage.

About BioNTech

BioNTech SE is a Mainz, Germany-headquartered biotechnology company that became a household name almost overnight in 2020 when its mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine, co-developed with Pfizer and marketed as Comirnaty, became one of the first authorized vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 and was administered billions of times worldwide. Founded in 2008 by physician-scientists Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci alongside immunologist Christoph Huber, the company was built on a far broader thesis than any single product: that messenger RNA could be engineered to instruct the body's own cells to produce therapeutic proteins, opening a new modality for cancer immunotherapies, infectious disease vaccines, and protein replacement therapies. That conviction is still the organizing principle of the company today, and oncology, not COVID-19, was always the original mission and remains the long-term north star. BioNTech now employs roughly 6,500 to 7,000 people across more than 20 sites worldwide, with German operations clustered in Mainz, Marburg, Idar-Oberstein, Berlin, Halle (Saale), and Munich, and a significant international footprint including Cambridge (Massachusetts and the United Kingdom), Berkeley Heights and Gaithersburg in the United States, Vienna, London, Istanbul, Singapore, Shanghai, Melbourne, and Kigali (Rwanda), where the company is deploying its container-based BioNTainer manufacturing modules to bring vaccine production capacity to the African continent. The pipeline spans individualized neoantigen-specific therapies (iNeST), off-the-shelf cancer vaccines, CAR-T cell therapies, antibody-drug conjugates, mRNA-based prophylactic vaccines for malaria, tuberculosis, HSV-2, mpox, and influenza, and a growing artificial intelligence platform anchored by the 2023 acquisition of InstaDeep, the London- and Tunis-based AI lab whose foundation models now underpin everything from antigen discovery to manufacturing optimization. BioNTech is dual-listed on NASDAQ (BNTX) and reinvests an unusually large share of revenue into R&D, which is why a candidate joining today should expect to find themselves at a company that is structurally a research organization first, a commercial pharma operation second, and increasingly an applied-AI shop wrapped around both. The stated values of unity, passion, and innovation map to a workforce that crosses more than 80 nationalities, and diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging are framed publicly as a commercial advantage rather than a compliance topic. For job seekers, the practical implication is that BioNTech hires across a wider surface area than most pure-play biotechs, ranging from PhD-level immunologists and computational biologists to GMP manufacturing technicians, regulatory affairs specialists, clinical operations leads, IT and SAP engineers, ML researchers at InstaDeep, and corporate functions in finance, legal, communications, and global supply chain.

Application Process

  1. 1
    Search and apply exclusively through the official portal at jobs

    Search and apply exclusively through the official portal at jobs.biontech.com (the German-language alias jobs.biontech.de redirects to the same SAP SuccessFactors career site); BioNTech explicitly states that it does not accept speculative or unsolicited applications, so every submission must be tied to a specific open requisition.

  2. 2
    Create a single applicant profile in SuccessFactors and upload your CV once; the

    Create a single applicant profile in SuccessFactors and upload your CV once; the system stores your documents so that subsequent applications to other BioNTech requisitions reuse the same profile, and you can also configure job alerts by location, business area, and career level rather than re-checking the site manually.

  3. 3
    Submit your CV in the language of the posting (English for international roles,

    Submit your CV in the language of the posting (English for international roles, often German for site-based manufacturing, apprenticeship, and some Mainz-based corporate roles); a cover letter is optional unless the job ad explicitly requests one, but for senior scientific or leadership roles a one-page motivation statement is strongly recommended.

  4. 4
    Expect an initial screening call with a recruiter within one to three weeks of a

    Expect an initial screening call with a recruiter within one to three weeks of applying, focused on the role scope, your motivation, salary expectations, work authorization, notice period, and language proficiency; this is conducted by phone or video and is conversational rather than technical.

  5. 5
    Progress to one or more interviews with the hiring manager (video) that go deep

    Progress to one or more interviews with the hiring manager (video) that go deep on technical fit, prior project ownership, and how you would approach specific problems the team is facing; for scientific and engineering roles you may be asked to give a 20 to 45 minute presentation on a past project of your choice.

  6. 6
    Complete a final-round panel, increasingly held on-site at Mainz, Marburg, Cambr

    Complete a final-round panel, increasingly held on-site at Mainz, Marburg, Cambridge, or the relevant location, where you meet your prospective team and cross-functional stakeholders; the explicit purpose, as BioNTech describes it, is to assess team and culture fit rather than to re-test technical skills.

  7. 7
    Receive a verbal offer from the recruiter followed by a written contract; expect

    Receive a verbal offer from the recruiter followed by a written contract; expect background and reference checks, and for German contracts a structured onboarding that includes Works Council notification, which can lengthen the time between verbal offer and start date by two to four weeks.

Resume Tips for BioNTech

recommended

Lead with the impact of your work, not the job description: BioNTech recruiters

Lead with the impact of your work, not the job description: BioNTech recruiters are screening for evidence that you owned outcomes, so quantify wherever possible (assays validated, batches released, papers published, models deployed, study endpoints met) rather than listing responsibilities.

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Use the exact terminology from the job posting, including German regulatory and

Use the exact terminology from the job posting, including German regulatory and quality vocabulary where relevant (GMP, GLP, GCP, ICH Q7/Q9/Q10, EU Annex 1, AMG, AMWHV); SuccessFactors uses keyword matching at the screening layer and recruiters look for domain-specific terms in the first pass.

recommended

For scientific roles, include a concise publications and conference section with

For scientific roles, include a concise publications and conference section with DOIs and patent numbers if you have them, and call out your specific contribution (first author, corresponding author, sole inventor) rather than just listing the citation.

recommended

For manufacturing, quality, and supply-chain roles, name the specific equipment,

For manufacturing, quality, and supply-chain roles, name the specific equipment, software, and standards you have hands-on experience with (Sartorius, Cytiva, Pall, SAP S/4HANA, LIMS, MES, Veeva Vault, TrackWise, Empower, deviation and CAPA workflows) because these are the keywords that map to internal job families.

recommended

If you have mRNA, LNP, vector, cell therapy, bioinformatics, or AI/ML experience

If you have mRNA, LNP, vector, cell therapy, bioinformatics, or AI/ML experience, surface it in the top third of the page; BioNTech's pipeline rewards modality-specific expertise, and a recruiter scanning for thirty seconds should be able to see your fit without scrolling.

recommended

Keep formatting clean, single-column, and ATS-safe: SAP SuccessFactors parses st

Keep formatting clean, single-column, and ATS-safe: SAP SuccessFactors parses standard PDF and DOCX reliably but stumbles on text in graphics, multi-column layouts, headers and footers, and unusual fonts, so save the visual flourishes for a portfolio link.

recommended

Note your work authorization status explicitly for the country of the role (EU c

Note your work authorization status explicitly for the country of the role (EU citizen, EU Blue Card eligible, US citizen or green card holder, requires visa sponsorship) because this is one of the first filters a recruiter applies and ambiguity often slows or stops a CV at screening.

recommended

Tailor a short, three-to-five line summary at the top that mirrors the language

Tailor a short, three-to-five line summary at the top that mirrors the language of BioNTech's three values (unity, passion, innovation) without being theatrical about it; concretely, that means showing collaboration across functions, sustained commitment to a hard problem, and at least one example of trying something non-obvious.

ATS System: SAP SuccessFactors

BioNTech runs its global hiring on SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting, accessed through the jobs.biontech.com career site (the German alias jobs.biontech.de redirects to the same instance). The portal is identifiable from the rmkcdn.successfactors.com asset URLs, JSESSIONID-based sessions, and the standard SuccessFactors candidate profile model where you create one account and reuse it across multiple applications. SuccessFactors is a structured, form-driven ATS with deterministic CV parsing, requisition-level keyword matching, and tightly integrated recruiter workflows, which means the candidate experience rewards precision and clarity over creative formatting.

  • Create your candidate profile once and let the system pre-fill subsequent applications rather than re-uploading a CV per requisition; recruiters can see your full profile across applications, so consistency matters.
  • Submit a single-column, ATS-safe PDF or DOCX with standard fonts (Arial, Calibri, Helvetica, Times New Roman), no text inside images, and minimal headers and footers, because SuccessFactors parses these layouts most reliably into structured fields.
  • Mirror the exact terminology, acronyms, and platform names from the job posting in your CV, including regulatory frameworks (GMP, GLP, GCP, ICH, EU Annex 1, AMG, AMWHV) and tooling (SAP, LIMS, MES, Veeva, TrackWise, Empower), since the screening layer is keyword-sensitive.
  • Fill in the structured fields (education, work history, certifications, languages, work authorization) completely rather than relying solely on the parsed CV; recruiters filter and search on these structured fields, and partial profiles get deprioritized.
  • Configure job alerts inside your SuccessFactors profile by business area, location, and career level, because BioNTech does not accept speculative applications and alerts are the cleanest way to surface a relevant requisition the moment it opens.
  • Apply in the language of the posting (English or German) and answer all knock-out questions truthfully, especially work authorization and notice period, since inconsistent or evasive answers are flagged by recruiters at the very first review.

Complete SAP SuccessFactors Resume Guide →

Interview Culture

BioNTech interviews are noticeably calmer and more substance-driven than the high-pressure case-and-brainteaser format common at consulting-adjacent biotechs and big tech.

The company is run by physician-scientists, and that DNA is felt all the way through the interview loop: the questions tend to be open, technical, and curious rather than adversarial, and interviewers are visibly more interested in how you reason through ambiguity than in whether you arrive at one preferred answer. The first conversation is almost always with a recruiter and is genuinely a screening conversation, not a stealth interview; the recruiter is checking motivation, language, location flexibility, work authorization, and salary alignment, and the best way to handle it is to be direct and unembellished about each. The hiring manager round is where the bar is actually set. For scientific and engineering roles, plan to deliver a short presentation on a project you led, ideally one where the experimental design or model architecture is non-trivial and where you can speak fluently about what failed, what you changed, and what you would do differently with another six months. Expect deep follow-up: BioNTech scientists are themselves publishing actively and will probe assumptions, controls, sample sizes, and statistical choices. For manufacturing, quality, and regulatory roles, expect scenario questions grounded in real GMP situations such as how you would respond to a deviation during fill-finish, how you would prioritize a CAPA backlog, or how you would defend a specification to a regulator; concrete answers from your own experience beat textbook frameworks every time. For corporate, IT, and InstaDeep AI roles, the technical depth shifts but the format does not: expect to talk through architectural choices, trade-offs, and stakeholder management with people who genuinely understand the underlying systems. The final round is explicitly framed as a team and culture-fit conversation, and BioNTech says so on its careers page. This is not a euphemism for a second technical screen. It is a real check on whether the team wants to spend years in a lab, a clean room, or a Teams call with you, and the questions reflect that: how you handle disagreement with a more senior scientist, how you give and receive critical feedback, how you behave when an experiment or a launch fails. Communication throughout the process is generally professional but sometimes slow, particularly for cross-site roles that involve coordination between Mainz and a US or UK location, so candidates should not interpret a one-to-two-week silence as rejection. Decisions are typically made by consensus across the panel rather than by the hiring manager alone, which is one reason the loop often has more interviewers than at a comparable US biotech.

What BioNTech Looks For

  • Demonstrable depth in a specific modality or function rather than broad-but-shallow exposure: BioNTech's pipeline is technically demanding, and hiring managers consistently prefer a candidate who has gone deep on mRNA, LNP formulation, CAR-T manufacturing, computational immunology, or GMP fill-finish over a generalist with a longer CV.
  • Evidence of ownership and follow-through, especially through setbacks: interviewers explicitly ask about projects that did not work, and the strongest answers describe what the candidate changed, what they learned, and what shipped in the end rather than blaming external factors.
  • Cross-functional collaboration as a default mode of working: the company's matrix structure means that a research scientist will routinely interact with CMC, regulatory, clinical operations, and IT, and candidates who can describe negotiating priorities across functions are weighted heavily.
  • Comfort with ambiguity and rapid pivots: BioNTech reorganized at speed during the pandemic and continues to pivot pipeline priorities as data reads out, so hiring managers look for people who can describe a time they moved decisively under uncertainty without waiting for perfect information.
  • Bilingual or multilingual fluency for German-based roles, especially English plus German for Mainz, Marburg, Idar-Oberstein, Berlin, Halle, and Munich; English-only candidates can succeed at senior scientific or commercial levels but are at a measurable disadvantage for site-based operations and quality roles.
  • Patient-centric framing: candidates who can articulate why a given technical decision matters for a patient outcome land better than those who frame their work purely in terms of academic novelty or commercial metrics, because the founders set that tone publicly and it has been internalized.
  • Regulatory literacy proportional to the role: even non-regulatory candidates are expected to know the basics of EMA, FDA, and ICH frameworks relevant to their function, because the company operates in one of the most heavily regulated environments in the industry.
  • Alignment with the stated values of unity, passion, and innovation in concrete behavior rather than language: the panel is checking for collaboration over solo heroics, sustained engagement over short-term opportunism, and willingness to challenge assumptions, including those of senior leaders, with evidence.

Frequently Asked Questions

What ATS does BioNTech use, and does that change how I should write my CV?
BioNTech uses SAP SuccessFactors, which you can recognize from the jobs.biontech.com career portal and the rmkcdn.successfactors.com assets it loads. Practically, that means you should submit a single-column PDF or DOCX with standard fonts, avoid embedding text inside images or graphics, keep headers and footers minimal, and mirror the exact terminology and acronyms used in the job posting. SuccessFactors parses cleanly when the structure is simple, and the recruiter screening layer is keyword-sensitive, so a tailored CV consistently outperforms a beautifully designed but generic one.
How long does the BioNTech hiring process typically take from application to offer?
Plan for four to eight weeks end to end for most roles, with senior scientific, leadership, and cross-site roles sometimes running ten to twelve weeks. The recruiter screen usually happens within one to three weeks of applying, the hiring manager interview within one to two weeks after that, and the final panel another one to three weeks later. German contracts can add another two to four weeks between verbal offer and start date because of Works Council notification and notice period management.
Do I need to speak German to work at BioNTech?
Not for most international, scientific, and leadership roles, where English is the working language and is sufficient. German is effectively required, or strongly preferred, for site-based GMP manufacturing, quality assurance, apprenticeships, working student roles in Germany, and many operations and IT positions in Mainz, Marburg, Idar-Oberstein, Berlin, Halle, and Munich. Even at a conversational B1 to B2 level, German signals commitment and meaningfully widens your internal mobility once you are inside the company.
Does BioNTech sponsor work visas, including for US, UK, and German locations?
Yes, BioNTech regularly sponsors work authorization, including EU Blue Cards for highly skilled non-EU candidates moving to Germany, Skilled Worker visas for the UK, and H-1B and similar paths in the US, but sponsorship is not automatic and is decided role by role based on seniority, scarcity of the skill set, and budget. Always state your current work authorization clearly on your CV and in the recruiter call so there is no ambiguity at screening.
What kinds of roles does BioNTech hire most often?
The largest sustained hiring areas are oncology and immunology research, computational biology and bioinformatics, GMP manufacturing and process development across mRNA, LNP, cell, and protein platforms, quality assurance and quality control, clinical operations and medical affairs, regulatory affairs, IT and SAP engineering, and AI and ML research at the InstaDeep subsidiary. Corporate functions in finance, legal, communications, supply chain, and HR are smaller in volume but recruit continuously.
What does the entry-level pathway look like for students and recent graduates?
BioNTech runs a structured early-career portfolio in Germany including working student positions, three-to-six-month internships, six accredited apprenticeship tracks (IT system integration, chemical lab assistant, biology lab assistant, pharmaceutical technician, warehouse logistics, industrial clerk), thesis opportunities tied to active research projects, and the ATLAS PhD program developed jointly with Translational Oncology Mainz. German apprentices and many working students also receive a Deutschlandticket covering up to 100 percent of commuting costs.
How should I prepare for the technical or scientific presentation in the second round?
Choose a single project where you owned a meaningful piece of the work, design 10 to 15 slides for a 20 to 30 minute talk, and budget at least as much time for questions as for the talk itself. Be ready to defend experimental design choices, controls, statistics, sample size, and reproducibility, and to discuss what did not work and how you would extend the project with another six months. Vague answers about other people's contributions are the single most common reason strong CVs do not convert at this stage.
Is BioNTech open to remote or hybrid work?
BioNTech offers flexible work arrangements that vary by site, function, and seniority. Wet-lab science, GMP manufacturing, quality control, and most clinical operations roles are inherently on-site. Computational, IT, regulatory, commercial, and many corporate roles are often hybrid with a typical expectation of two to three days per week on-site near a hub such as Mainz, Marburg, Cambridge (US or UK), or Berkeley Heights. Fully remote arrangements exist but are the exception rather than the default and usually require a strong business case from the hiring manager.
What does BioNTech actually pay, and how is the package structured?
BioNTech does not publish salary bands publicly, but in Germany it benchmarks competitively against the top tier of pharma and biotech employers, with structured base salary, an annual variable bonus, and equity (RSUs) for many roles above a threshold seniority. US-based roles in Cambridge, Berkeley Heights, and Gaithersburg are competitive with the Boston and New Jersey biotech market and typically include base, target bonus, RSU grants, and standard US benefits. Always discuss specifics openly with the recruiter in the first call rather than waiting for the offer stage.
What is the single highest-leverage thing I can do to stand out in a BioNTech application?
Tailor a focused CV and cover paragraph to one specific posting using the exact technical and regulatory vocabulary from the job ad, and be ready to talk concretely about a project you owned end to end, including what failed and how you adapted. The combination of a precisely targeted application and substantive, intellectually honest examples in the first conversation is what consistently moves candidates from the long list to the shortlist at a company whose interviewers are themselves working scientists and operators.

Open Positions

BioNTech currently has 87 open positions.

Check Your Resume Before Applying → View 87 open positions at BioNTech

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