How to Apply to SK Biopharmaceuticals

Key Takeaways

SK Biopharmaceuticals is the SK Group biopharma affiliate behind Cenobamate (Xcopri in the U.S., Ontozry in Europe), Korea's first FDA-approved orally administered new chemical entity, headquartered in Pangyo with a U.S. commercial subsidiary in Paramus, New Jersey.
Hiring runs through a custom Korean recruit portal at recruit.skbp.com, not a third-party ATS. Expect a structured Korean corporate process including 자기소개서 essays, the SKCT aptitude test for many tracks, and two interview rounds culminating in an executive (임원) round.
The honest commercial picture is mixed: Cenobamate has strong efficacy data but a slower-than-projected U.S. launch against entrenched competition from Fycompa, Briviact, Vimpat, and generics. The company is openly investing in pipeline diversification beyond CNS into sleep, depression, Alzheimer's, and oncology.
Hiring is active across commercial, clinical, regulatory, business development, discovery, and corporate functions. Cenobamate global expansion (Europe with Angelini, Japan with Ono, China with Ignis) and the next pipeline wave are the primary near-term drivers of headcount.
Bilingual Korean and English capability is effectively a baseline for professional roles, with Japanese and Mandarin as meaningful pluses for specific BD and global launch positions. The Korean-language 자기소개서 is a critical written artifact that should not be machine-translated or treated as boilerplate.
Compensation is calibrated to the Korean biopharma market with a chaebol premium and includes equity components for senior roles tied to KOSPI performance. The full hiring cycle typically runs six to twelve weeks from application to offer, longer than U.S. biotech norms.
The SKMS (SK Management System) and SUPEX (Super Excellent) frameworks are taken seriously inside the company and surface in executive interviews. Candidates who engage thoughtfully with these frameworks via concrete examples consistently outperform those who treat them as decorative.

About SK Biopharmaceuticals

SK Biopharmaceuticals Co., Ltd. (SK바이오팜) is a Korean integrated biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Pangyo Techno Valley, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi-do, just south of Seoul. The company is listed on the Korea Exchange under KOSPI ticker 326030 and operates as the central nervous system (CNS) biopharma affiliate of SK Group, one of Korea's largest chaebol conglomerates, ultimately controlled by the Chey family through SK Holdings. SK Biopharmaceuticals employs roughly 600 people across its Pangyo R&D and corporate headquarters, with additional staff at U.S. commercial subsidiary SK Life Science, Inc. in Paramus, New Jersey, which runs the U.S. launch and lifecycle management of the company's flagship product. The company was formally spun off from SK Holdings in 2011 to consolidate the group's CNS drug discovery work that had been running inside SK since the early 1990s, and it completed one of the most heavily oversubscribed IPOs in KOSPI history in July 2020. The IPO milestone was unlocked by the U.S. FDA approval of cenobamate (Xcopri in the U.S.) for adult partial-onset (focal) seizures in November 2019, which made it the first Korean-discovered, orally administered new chemical entity (NCE) ever approved by the FDA without a development partner taking the molecule through registration. The European Medicines Agency approved the same molecule under the brand Ontozry in March 2021, with Angelini Pharma as the European commercial partner. Subsequent approvals have followed in Canada, Israel, the United Kingdom (post-Brexit MHRA), and several Latin American and Asian markets, and a Japanese filing partnered with Ono Pharmaceutical was advanced through the 2024-2025 cycle as part of the company's stated global expansion plan. The honest commercial picture is more complicated than the regulatory one. Cenobamate has shown strong efficacy data — including unusually high seizure-freedom rates in pivotal refractory focal-epilepsy trials — but its U.S. launch has been slower than initial IPO-era projections and faces entrenched competition from established branded antiepileptics including Eisai's Fycompa (perampanel), UCB's Briviact (brivaracetam) and Vimpat (lacosamide), and a deep field of generic levetiracetam and lamotrigine. Quarterly U.S. prescription growth has been steady but not breakout, and the company continues to invest heavily in field salesforce expansion, payer access, and KOL engagement to expand the prescriber base beyond comprehensive epilepsy centers. Korean and global generic-equivalent competition from domestic peers — Yuhan, Hanmi, Daewoong, Boryung, and Chong Kun Dang (CKD) — does not threaten Cenobamate directly, but it shapes the broader recruiting market for experienced Korean clinical and regulatory talent. Under CEO Lee Dong-hoon (이동훈), who took the role in 2023 after a career across SK Group affiliates and pharma operations, the company has been candid that one approved drug is not a sustainable platform, and has accelerated a pipeline pivot beyond CNS. Active programs as of 2026 include sunobinop (an oral antagonist in development for sleep maintenance insomnia and other CNS indications, read out in Phase 2 through 2024-2025), a major depressive disorder program, an Alzheimer's disease program, and a newer expansion into oncology — including radiopharmaceuticals and targeted protein degraders — where SK Group's broader investments in CDMO and life sciences manufacturing provide adjacency. The company has also been an active business development buyer of in-licensing opportunities and has publicly stated an intent to acquire commercial-stage assets to fill the revenue gap before its next internal molecule reaches the market. For candidates, this means SK Biopharmaceuticals is hiring across a wider functional range than at any point in its history — commercial, BD, clinical, discovery, and corporate — but with explicit pressure to deliver against Cenobamate's growth curve and the next pipeline wave.

Application Process

1
Browse open roles at the SK Biopharmaceuticals careers portal (recruit
Browse open roles at the SK Biopharmaceuticals careers portal (recruit.skbp.com or the Korean-language 채용 page linked from skbiopharmaceuticals.com). The portal is a custom SK-built recruiting system, not Greenhouse or Workday, and is primarily Korean-language with a partial English overlay for select global commercial and U.S.-based positions. Postings are organized by hiring track: 신입 (sin-ip, entry-level new graduate), 경력 (gyeong-ryeok, experienced hire), 인턴 (intern), and a separate U.S. careers feed managed through SK Life Science. Cenobamate launch and global expansion roles are almost exclusively gyeongryeok.
2
Create an account on the SK Biopharmaceuticals recruit portal using your Korean
Create an account on the SK Biopharmaceuticals recruit portal using your Korean mobile number for SMS verification, or your email if you are an international applicant. The portal supports Korean residency identity verification (본인인증) for domestic candidates and a separate flow for foreign applicants, which is needed for payroll and visa processing later in the cycle. Complete the structured online application (입사지원서) with biographical information, education history with GPA, language scores (TOEIC, OPIc, TEPS, JLPT), and uploads of your resume and credentials.
3
Write the self-introduction essays (자기소개서) carefully
Write the self-introduction essays (자기소개서) carefully. SK Group hiring uses a structured 자기소개서 with typically three to five prompts of 1,000 to 2,000 Korean characters each, covering motivation, a defining personal experience, an example of cross-functional collaboration or conflict resolution, alignment with SK Group values, and a forward-looking career thesis. These essays are the primary written artifact the document screening committee evaluates and are weighted heavily — machine-translated or generic content is filtered out at the screening stage.
4
Expect a document screening (서류전형) period of two to four weeks
Expect a document screening (서류전형) period of two to four weeks. SK Group screening committees evaluate applications in batches tied to internal hiring cycles, so timing is less rolling than at U.S. or European biotech peers. Status updates are pushed through the portal and via SMS in Korean. Candidates who pass document screening are invited to the SKCT (SK Comprehensive Aptitude Test), a standardized assessment combining verbal reasoning, numerical reasoning, situational judgment, and an SK Group culture-fit module. The SKCT is mandatory for most 신입 tracks and many 경력 tracks; senior or specialized roles may substitute or waive it for role-specific technical assessment.
5
Move into the first-round interview (1차 면접), typically a 60 to 90 minute panel w
Move into the first-round interview (1차 면접), typically a 60 to 90 minute panel with the hiring manager, two to four working-level team members, and an HR partner. The format is structured and Korean-language by default, with English used in segments where the role requires functional English. Working-level interviews probe technical depth (medicinal chemistry strategy, regulatory submission decision-making, specialty launch dynamics, etc.) alongside behavioral evaluation under the STAR framework. Some technical tracks add a presentation or case round.
6
Progress to the second-round interview (2차 면접, 임원면접)
Progress to the second-round interview (2차 면접, 임원면접) — the executive round, typically 45 to 60 minutes with one or more senior leaders such as a division head, CFO, COO, or CEO depending on the role's seniority. The tone shifts from technical evaluation to strategic and cultural fit. Reference checks (평판조회) are common for 경력 hires at manager level and above, conducted through stated references and, with consent, through industry network back-channels in the relatively small Korean biopharma talent pool.
7
Receive an offer through the recruit portal followed by formal employment contra
Receive an offer through the recruit portal followed by formal employment contract (근로계약서) negotiation. Compensation is paid in Korean won and typically includes base salary, a performance bonus tied to company and individual KPIs, restricted stock or stock options for senior roles calibrated against KOSPI performance, comprehensive Korean national health insurance, four major social insurances (4대보험), severance accrual (퇴직금), and SK Group affiliate benefits. International hires receive relocation support and E-7 specialty occupation visa sponsorship where applicable.
8
Complete onboarding, which includes mandatory SK Group orientation covering SKMS
Complete onboarding, which includes mandatory SK Group orientation covering SKMS (SK Management System), ethics and compliance training, and pharmaceutical-specific GxP and pharmacovigilance training before role-specific onboarding begins. New hires are typically expected to start within four to eight weeks of offer acceptance, with flexibility for international candidates managing visa timelines. The full process from initial application to offer typically runs six to twelve weeks — longer than U.S. biotech norms but consistent with Korean corporate hiring cadences.

Resume Tips for SK Biopharmaceuticals

recommended

Submit both a Korean resume (이력서) and an English resume where the role posting i

Submit both a Korean resume (이력서) and an English resume where the role posting is bilingual or where you are applying from outside Korea. The Korean version follows the standard Korean format — photo at top right (still common in Korean corporate hiring), structured personal information block, chronological education and work history, certifications, and language scores. The English version follows international biotech conventions: no photo, two pages maximum for individual contributor roles, three pages maximum for director-level and above.

recommended

Lead with concrete pharmaceutical experience that maps to SK Biopharmaceuticals'

Lead with concrete pharmaceutical experience that maps to SK Biopharmaceuticals' active priorities: epilepsy and broader CNS clinical development, regulatory submissions to FDA, EMA, MFDS (Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety), MHRA, and PMDA, commercial launch experience for branded specialty pharmaceuticals, and pipeline-relevant therapeutic areas (sleep medicine, depression, Alzheimer's, oncology including radiopharmaceuticals and protein degraders). For 경력 candidates, lead with a Korean-language summary block (경력 요약) that maps your background to the specific posting.

recommended

Be explicit about regulatory framework experience

Be explicit about regulatory framework experience. ICH guidelines, IND and NDA submissions to FDA, MAA submissions to EMA, IND and NDA equivalents to MFDS, and J-NDA submissions to PMDA all carry weight. Specify the indication, the molecule type (small molecule versus biologic), and your role in the submission rather than describing process abstractly. NCE small-molecule experience maps best to the company's historical pipeline; biologics and emerging modality experience is increasingly relevant given the oncology pivot.

recommended

For discovery and translational roles, name your platforms and modalities precis

For discovery and translational roles, name your platforms and modalities precisely. Medicinal chemistry stack (synthesis scale, automation, computational chemistry tools), in vitro pharmacology assays, in vivo CNS models, DMPK platforms, structural biology tools, and any AI-driven discovery experience should appear by name where you have hands-on capability. Vague phrasing like ‘CNS drug discovery experience' will be discounted by reviewers who are themselves working chemists and biologists.

recommended

Quantify outcomes in scientifically and commercially meaningful ways

Quantify outcomes in scientifically and commercially meaningful ways. ‘Led CMC package supporting MFDS NDA acceptance in Q3 2024,' ‘Drove 35 percent year-over-year growth in epilepsy-specialist prescriber base across the Northeast U.S. territory,' or ‘Designed and executed the in vivo efficacy package that supported the GLP-tox handoff for an internal sleep program' is far more useful than ‘drove improvements' or ‘managed studies.' Numbers, regulatory milestones, publications, and patents all signal real ownership.

recommended

List language proficiency formally with test scores and dates

List language proficiency formally with test scores and dates. TOEIC, OPIc, and TEPS for English; JLPT for Japanese; HSK for Mandarin. Functional written and spoken English is effectively a baseline for all professional positions; Japanese is a meaningful plus for the Cenobamate Japan launch and BD work; Mandarin is increasingly relevant for China BD activity following the 2024 Ignis Therapeutics partnership. Include relevant certifications: Korean pharmacist license (약사 면허), GxP credentials, PMP or PRINCE2, RAC, ACRP or SoCRA.

recommended

Submit as a clean PDF with simple formatting

Submit as a clean PDF with simple formatting. Standard Korean fonts (맑은 고딕, 나눔고딕) for the Korean resume; standard English fonts (Calibri, Arial, Helvetica) for the English version. Avoid heavily designed templates, multi-column layouts, embedded text boxes, and infographic elements — the recruit portal parser is conservative and complex layouts can cause data loss in screening. List publications, preprints, and patents with full citations and DOI or patent numbers in a clearly labeled section.

recommended

Acknowledge work authorization status clearly

Acknowledge work authorization status clearly. For Korean nationals this is implicit; for foreign applicants, state your current visa status (D-10, E-7, F-series, or none yet) and your willingness to relocate to the Pangyo headquarters. SK Biopharmaceuticals sponsors E-7 specialty occupation visas for qualified hires but timelines and document requirements vary by nationality. For SK Life Science roles in Paramus, state your U.S. work authorization status (citizen, permanent resident, current visa with expiration, or sponsorship needed).

ATS System: Custom SK Biopharmaceuticals Recruit Portal

SK Biopharmaceuticals operates a custom-built Korean recruit portal at recruit.skbp.com rather than using a third-party ATS such as Greenhouse, Workday, or SmartRecruiters. The portal is consistent in look and structure with the broader SK Group family of recruit sites and shares the underlying SK Careers infrastructure used across SK affiliates. It is bilingual Korean and English, but the Korean experience is canonical and several role-specific fields and the 자기소개서 essay prompts appear in Korean only. The portal handles end-to-end candidate workflow: application submission, structured 자기소개서 essay capture, document upload, SKCT aptitude test scheduling, interview scheduling, status notifications via SMS and email, and offer letter delivery. It is not a Greenhouse-style ATS and does not expose a public job board JSON feed — it is closer to a corporate Korean HR system, and candidates accustomed to U.S. or European applicant tracking systems should plan for a different cadence and document set.

Complete the 자기소개서 (self-introduction essay) prompts thoughtfully and in idiomatic Korean. These are not optional or perfunctory — they are the primary written artifact the document screening committee evaluates, and machine-translated, AI-generated, or generic content is easy to spot and is filtered out. If your Korean is not fluent, invest in professional editing for these prompts. Foreign-national candidates applying to global roles can sometimes submit in English; confirm with the role posting.
Submit your resume as a clean, single-column PDF with simple formatting. Standard fonts, no embedded images other than the standard Korean resume photo, no text boxes, no multi-column layouts. The portal parser is conservative and can scramble complex layouts, which makes your background harder to evaluate during the structured screening stage.
Complete every field in the structured application form, including optional ones such as language test scores, certifications, and self-identification. Korean corporate screening relies on structured data fields for filtering and triage, and incomplete applications are commonly set aside in favor of complete submissions. Voluntary self-identification questions are confidential and not used in candidacy decisions.
Apply only once per requisition. The portal deduplicates by national identification number for Korean applicants and by email address for foreign applicants, and a duplicate submission for the same role does not improve your chances. To update your application, withdraw the original through the portal and resubmit cleanly before the requisition closes.
Watch for SMS and email notifications throughout the cycle. Korean recruit portals push status updates and interview scheduling via SMS to the registered mobile number, and missing a notification can cost you a slot. Foreign applicants without a Korean mobile number should check email frequently and confirm during the application that the recruiter has a working alternate contact channel.

Interview Culture

SK Biopharmaceuticals' interview culture sits at the intersection of Korean chaebol corporate tradition and modern global biopharma.

The first-round interview (1차 면접) is typically a 60 to 90 minute panel with the hiring manager, two to four working-level team members, and an HR partner. The format is structured and Korean-language by default, with English used in segments where the role requires functional English (which is most professional positions, given Cenobamate's global footprint). Questions probe technical and functional depth, prior project ownership, and behavioral patterns under the STAR framework familiar to global candidates, but with a Korean cadence that values demonstrated humility, articulated respect for the team, and a clear sense of how the candidate would integrate into existing working hierarchies. For scientific and clinical roles, the working-level interview includes substantive technical content. Discovery candidates should expect probing questions about medicinal chemistry strategy, target validation, in vivo translation, and CNS-specific challenges such as blood-brain barrier penetration and central side-effect profiling. Clinical and regulatory candidates should expect detailed questions about specific submissions they have led, regulatory authority interactions, and decision-making in the face of incomplete data. Commercial candidates face questions about specialty pharmaceutical launch dynamics, payer access, KOL engagement, and how they would compete in the antiepileptic market specifically against Fycompa, Briviact, Vimpat, and the deep generic field. Some tracks add a 30 to 45 minute presentation on a prior project followed by panel Q and A. The second-round interview (2차 면접, 임원면접) is the executive round, typically 45 to 60 minutes with one or more senior leaders — division head, CFO, COO, or CEO depending on the role's seniority. The tone shifts from technical evaluation to strategic and cultural fit. Expect questions about long-term career motivation, why SK Biopharmaceuticals over competing Korean biopharma employers (Yuhan, Hanmi, Daewoong, Boryung, CKD, Celltrion, Samsung Biologics), how you would think about the company's pipeline gap between Cenobamate and the next internal molecule, and how you would operate within SK Group's affiliate ecosystem. Senior candidates should be prepared to articulate a credible 90-day and one-year plan and to engage thoughtfully with the SKMS (SK Management System) values framework, which Korean SK leaders take seriously and reference routinely. Interviewers consistently evaluate candidates against the SUPEX (Super Excellent) capability standard — the willingness and ability to push beyond conventional performance toward exceptional outcomes — and look for concrete moments where you exceeded a defined expectation, owned a difficult problem end-to-end, and delivered a result the organization could not have achieved without your personal initiative. Candor about Cenobamate's commercial trajectory is welcomed; flattery and dismissal both read poorly.

What SK Biopharmaceuticals Looks For

Deep functional or scientific craft. SK Biopharmaceuticals consistently hires for genuine depth — CNS medicinal chemistry, clinical operations in epilepsy or sleep medicine, regulatory submissions to FDA and EMA, specialty pharmaceutical launch execution, business development for in-licensing — over generalist breadth. Candidates who can demonstrate that they have personally delivered something difficult and understand it deeply consistently advance further than candidates with broader but shallower exposure.
Bilingual or multilingual functional capability. The company operates across Korean, English, and increasingly Japanese and Mandarin business contexts, with a U.S. commercial subsidiary in New Jersey and global partnerships including Angelini Pharma in Europe, Ono Pharmaceutical in Japan, and Ignis Therapeutics in China. Candidates who can operate fluently across language and cultural boundaries — not just translate — are unusually valuable, particularly for global BD, regulatory affairs, and medical affairs roles.
Track record of shipping in regulated pharmaceutical environments. For clinical, regulatory, CMC, quality, and pharmacovigilance roles, SK Biopharmaceuticals screens hard for candidates who have actually delivered submissions, supported authority inspections, or run GxP systems — not just observed them. NCE small-molecule experience maps best to the company's historical pipeline, but biologics and emerging modality experience (ADCs, radiopharmaceuticals, targeted protein degraders) is increasingly relevant given the oncology pivot.
High agency within a structured organization. SK Biopharmaceuticals is a chaebol-affiliated KOSPI-listed company with established hierarchies and process discipline, but it operates with the urgency of a clinical-and-commercial-stage biopharma running against a single-product revenue concentration. Interviewers look for candidates who can drive decisions and outcomes within that structure — neither passively waiting for direction nor disregarding the organizational fabric — and can describe specific moments where they exercised judgment under pressure.
Cultural alignment with SKMS and SUPEX. The SK Management System and the SUPEX (Super Excellent) framework are not corporate decoration — they shape how decisions are made, performance is evaluated, and promotions are awarded inside SK Group affiliates. Candidates who can engage thoughtfully with these frameworks, ideally by referencing concrete past behavior that aligns with them, consistently outperform candidates who treat them as boilerplate or who dismiss them as bureaucratic.
Willingness to base in Pangyo or accept the relevant geographic posting. Headquarters roles are on-site or hybrid in Pangyo Techno Valley, with limited fully remote options. U.S. commercial and medical roles are based in Paramus, New Jersey, with field-based exceptions for sales and MSL positions. Candidates who treat location as negotiable late in the process tend to stall, particularly for roles requiring tight integration with the Pangyo R&D and commercial teams.
Long-term motivation aligned with the company's pipeline strategy. Candidates who frame their interest exclusively around Cenobamate's regulatory achievement or SK Group's brand often read as one-dimensional. Candidates who can articulate why they want to help the company execute the next chapter — global Cenobamate expansion, the sleep and depression and Alzheimer's pipeline, the oncology pivot, and credible BD-driven asset acquisition — tend to land much better in both the working-level and executive interviews.
Scientific and business communication ability. Both Korean and English written communication (regulatory documents, internal memos, board materials, scientific publications) and oral communication (presentations to senior leadership, KOL engagement, regulator interactions) are evaluated explicitly. Candidates who can take a complex topic and communicate it cleanly to a mixed-discipline, cross-cultural audience consistently outperform candidates who cannot, regardless of underlying technical depth.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is SK Biopharmaceuticals headquartered, and where are most jobs located?

The company is headquartered in Pangyo Techno Valley, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, where roughly 600 employees work across discovery, clinical development, regulatory affairs, business development, and corporate functions. The U.S. commercial subsidiary, SK Life Science, Inc., is based in Paramus, New Jersey, and supports Cenobamate's U.S. commercialization. Most R&D, regulatory, and corporate roles are Pangyo-based on-site or hybrid; most U.S. commercial and medical affairs roles are based at SK Life Science with field-based exceptions for sales and medical science liaison positions.

What is Cenobamate, and why does it matter for the company?

Cenobamate is a small-molecule antiseizure medication discovered and developed in-house by SK Biopharmaceuticals, approved by the U.S. FDA in November 2019 as Xcopri for adult partial-onset (focal) seizures and approved in Europe in March 2021 as Ontozry. It was the first Korean-discovered and Korean-developed orally administered new chemical entity (NCE) ever approved by the FDA without a partner taking the molecule through registration, and it remains the company's only commercial-stage product. It is the central revenue driver and the most important asset in the portfolio.

How is the Cenobamate commercial launch actually performing?

Honestly, it has been slower than initial IPO-era projections. The drug has shown unusually strong efficacy data in pivotal trials, particularly seizure-freedom rates in refractory adult focal epilepsy, but U.S. uptake has been steady rather than breakout in the face of entrenched competition from Eisai's Fycompa, UCB's Briviact and Vimpat, and a deep field of generic levetiracetam and lamotrigine. The company continues to invest heavily in field salesforce, payer access, and KOL engagement, and is pursuing global expansion through Angelini in Europe, Ono in Japan, and Ignis in China as the primary growth lever through 2025 and into 2026.

Who is the CEO, and what is the strategic direction under his leadership?

Lee Dong-hoon (이동훈) became CEO in 2023 after a career across SK Group affiliates and pharma operations. He has set a strategic direction focused on three priorities: maximizing global Cenobamate revenue including the Japan launch with Ono Pharmaceutical and the China filing with Ignis Therapeutics; accelerating the internal pipeline beyond CNS into sleep medicine (sunobinop), depression, Alzheimer's disease, and oncology including radiopharmaceuticals and targeted protein degraders; and pursuing business development to acquire commercial-stage assets that can fill the revenue gap before the next internal molecule reaches the market.

Does the company use Greenhouse, Workday, or another standard ATS?

No. SK Biopharmaceuticals uses a custom Korean recruit portal at recruit.skbp.com, consistent with the broader SK Group family of recruit sites. It is bilingual Korean and English but the Korean experience is canonical, with several role-specific fields and the 자기소개서 essay prompts in Korean only. The portal handles application submission, document upload, SKCT aptitude test scheduling, interview scheduling, and offer delivery end to end. There is no public Greenhouse, Workday, Lever, or SmartRecruiters board feed.

How important is Korean fluency for a job at SK Biopharmaceuticals?

For headquarters-based roles, functional Korean is effectively required for daily collaboration, internal documentation, and the interview process itself. Many global-facing roles (regulatory affairs, clinical operations, BD, medical affairs) require fluent business English alongside Korean. For the U.S. subsidiary SK Life Science, Korean is helpful but not required — those roles run in English. Foreign nationals applying to Pangyo headquarters should be candid about their Korean level and prepared to demonstrate it in interview rather than overstating it on the resume.

What is the SKCT aptitude test, and when do I need to take it?

The SKCT (SK Comprehensive Aptitude Test) is the SK Group standardized assessment combining verbal reasoning, numerical reasoning, situational judgment, and an SK Group culture-fit module. It is mandatory for most 신입 (new graduate) applications and for many 경력 (experienced hire) tracks, though some senior or specialized roles substitute or waive it in favor of role-specific technical assessment. It is administered online with proctoring, and the cutoff is competitive — strong preparation using publicly available SKCT practice materials is worthwhile.

How long does the hiring process take from application to offer?

Six to twelve weeks is typical, longer than U.S. biotech norms but consistent with Korean corporate hiring cadences. The cycle includes document screening (서류전형, two to four weeks), aptitude testing where applicable (one to two weeks), the first-round working-level interview (1차 면접), the second-round executive interview (2차 면접, 임원면접), reference checks (평판조회) for senior 경력 hires, and offer extension. International hires managing visa timelines may see additional delay between offer acceptance and start date.

How does SK Biopharmaceuticals compare to competing Korean biopharma employers?

SK Biopharmaceuticals is the only Korean company with an FDA-approved, originator-discovered, orally administered NCE on the market, which differentiates it from most domestic peers. Yuhan, Hanmi, Daewoong, Boryung, and Chong Kun Dang (CKD) are larger and broader integrated pharma companies with stronger generic and traditional Rx franchises but historically narrower originator NCE pipelines. Celltrion and Samsung Biologics are biologics specialists. The trade-off for candidates is that SK Biopharmaceuticals offers higher exposure to global-stage development and U.S. commercialization, but with concentrated revenue dependence on Cenobamate.

Does SK Biopharmaceuticals sponsor work visas for foreign applicants?

Yes, the company regularly sponsors E-7 specialty occupation visas for qualified foreign hires at the Pangyo headquarters, particularly for senior roles requiring scarce specialized expertise (clinical development, regulatory affairs, business development, medicinal chemistry, computational discovery). Timelines and document requirements vary by nationality and current Korean immigration backlogs. For SK Life Science roles in Paramus, New Jersey, U.S. work authorization sponsorship (H-1B, TN where applicable) is available but subject to standard U.S. visa constraints. State your work authorization status clearly in your application.

Open Positions

SK Biopharmaceuticals currently has 2 open positions.

Check Your Resume Before Applying → View 2 open positions at SK Biopharmaceuticals

How to Apply to SK Biopharmaceuticals

Key Takeaways

About SK Biopharmaceuticals

Application Process

Resume Tips for SK Biopharmaceuticals

Submit both a Korean resume (이력서) and an English resume where the role posting i

Lead with concrete pharmaceutical experience that maps to SK Biopharmaceuticals'

Be explicit about regulatory framework experience

For discovery and translational roles, name your platforms and modalities precis

Quantify outcomes in scientifically and commercially meaningful ways

List language proficiency formally with test scores and dates

Submit as a clean PDF with simple formatting

Acknowledge work authorization status clearly

ATS System: Custom SK Biopharmaceuticals Recruit Portal

Interview Culture

What SK Biopharmaceuticals Looks For

Frequently Asked Questions

Open Positions

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