Unable to match the high salaries paid by the investment sector, university tech transfer offices are becoming creative with non-financial perks and career pathways.
One of the top salaries in university technology transfer is at Yale Ventures, the commercialisation arm of the eponymous US Ivy League university. A recent job posting for an executive director of business development pays a maximum $250,000.
But elsewhere in technology transfer, you would be lucky to find salaries of that magnitude, the level that would attract people from sectors like venture capital or deep tech. A licensing manager in biosciences at University of Colorado pays between $95,800 and $110,000. A similar technology transfer licensing officer job at Auburn University in the US state of Alabama pays between $79,800 and $143,600.
In the UK, salaries for similar positions are quite a bit lower. A recent job posting for an investment manager at Cambridge Enterprise, the commercialisation arm of the University of Cambridge, pays up to £64,000 ($85,652), one of the more remunerative pay packages. A tech transfer innovation manager role at the University of Surrey, by comparison, pays between £45,585 and £49,794.
Compensation in technology transfer is an not a level playing field. In the face of budget cuts and financing constraints, academic institutions are having to double down on non-salary benefits to attract staff who have backgrounds in areas such as deep tech, biosciences and venture capital investing.
All this is happening at a time when commercialisation arms of universities are under pressure to increase the rate at which they spin out companies. Governments in countries like the UK have proposed publicly tracking the number of spinouts universities are creating annually, putting pressure on universities to show the economic benefits they are creating through technology transfer.
Cambridge Enterprise has revamped its non-salary perks and even rebranded itself away from the tech transfer office or TTO moniker to show that it offers varied career paths to potential recruits.
The organisation still generally hires people with PhDs for technology development licensing but will also consider people with higher degrees who also have experience in technology transfer. Paul Seabright, deputy director of Cambridge Enterprise, says the licensing team has seen quite a bit of staff turnover.
It has recently improved non-salary benefits to attract and retain staff. These include adding private medical insurance and refurbishing its offices to make it more conducive to the post-covid style of working, with quiet areas where people can do video calls and collaboration spaces for bigger gatherings.
Career pathways
Cambridge Enterprise has also introduced a four-year career progression plan aimed at preventing staff from feeling stuck in entry level associate positions.
The hardest area to recruit is in its ventures team where it has seen a lot of staff turnover. “People will come in, learn the role, and probably move on to a higher paid VC role in a couple of years,” says Seabright. To counteract this churn, the team is working on creating a pipeline of staff who can fill these investment roles.
“We need to address the carry issue. Perhaps this will be in the form of a bonus rather than carry per se.”
Paul Seabright, Cambridge Enterprise
It is also trying to address how to retain more highly skilled people by revamping compensation structures to mimic VC-style compensation such as carried interest.
“We need to address the carry issue. Perhaps this will be in the form of a bonus rather than carry per se,” says Seabright.
This month Cambridge Enterprise announced it had hired a CEO from the US where tech transfer salaries are typically higher. Jim Glasheen, a startup founder and Silicon Valley investor, was an executive vice-chancellor of innovation and business development at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, before he launched two biotech companies.
Cambridge Enterprise was not able to offer a competitive salary based on what Glasheen was earning in the US, says Seabright. Instead, the commercialisation unit relies on attracting high calibre talent through the vision it has of building a broader ecosystem.
The commercialisation arm has launched a number of ecosystem building initiatives that go beyond the basics of technology transfer. The university has invested £50m in over the past few years to boost its activities, including the recent launch of Founders at the University of Cambridge, an accelerator and 14-week pre-seed programme focused on product development and business strategy. It also recently launched Innovate Cambridge, a public-private partnership that aims to establish Cambridge as a centre for startup investment.
“We’ve been developing what the office delivers, so it is no longer a TTO and much more of an innovation agency,” says Seabright.
“He’s [Glasheen] attracted by the vision, the ambition, the ecosystem that we fortunately sit in and the progress we have made so far,” says Seabright.
“We’ve been developing what the office delivers, so it is no longer a TTO and much more of an innovation agency.”
Paul Seabright, Cambridge Enterprise
Other technology transfer offices have structured themselves so that they are not constrained by the salary bands that universities offer to recruits. Will Charles, executive director of investment at UniServices, the technology transfer office of the University of Auckland in New Zealand, says his commercialisation unit has the freedom to create its own financial incentive schemes.
“You can actually set up a decent remuneration package that isn’t driven by universities if you are a separate company,” says Charles. His team can earn, for example, up to 25% of their base salary as a bonus.
UniServices also has a venture fund that invests small cheque sizes up to $100,000 in its spinouts. Because the investments are small, he doesn’t expect to hire VC professionals used to investing larger amounts.
Instead, the ventures team seeks to hire people with PhDs who are starting their career and have attended some business courses.
It views its technology transfer office as a kind of launchpad for people to move into venture capital or the innovation ecosystem.
“We expect people to come through here as a transition to towards being a VC.”
Will Charles, UniServices
“We expect people to come through here as a transition to towards being a VC or to being an analyst in the city or working for a company,” says Charles
“If I look at the community here, there are a bunch of people who’ve been through our programmes. You have some of your more senior people doing more investing and then there is a pipeline of people who can develop skills on their way through.”
Monash Innovation, the commercialisation arm of Monash University in Australia, has a similar mindset when to comes seeing itself almost as a launchpad for people to move on to other careers. “We don’t want to keep people beyond where it makes sense for them and for us. We will always try to encourage people to develop their skills and if we cannot find them the right next step up, we’d be very happy for them to move somewhere else if they can get a step up,” says Alastair Hick, chief commercialisation officer of Monash Innovation.
While the tech transfer office has no problem hiring entry-level staff, it faces more difficulty hiring for managerial roles with at least five years of experience. Hick has found that once team members have gained a lot of deal experience, the salary Monash is able to offer becomes uncompetitive. “Quite quickly they become too expensive for us. When I’m looking for someone who’s got a manager role and deal sheet experience, those roles are incredibly difficult to recruit to,” says Hick.
His solution is to hire internally for more senior roles as the tech transfer office cannot compete on salary for external candidates. It has developed a professional development programme to retain staff, including offering tech transfer training courses and the opportunity to take observer or director roles on spinout boards.
Monash Innovation is hiring for a senior role at its A$15m ($10m) investment fund, which Hick says has attracted a lot of applicants. He speculates it is because the role offers a lot of exposure to deals and can position people for well paid jobs in the future. The investment fund has a portfolio of 30 companies and does between eight and 10 deals a year. It does not offer carry compensation for this type of role but can be “reasonably competitive in terms of salary,” says Hick. Although the tech transfer office’s salaries are bound to the university’s salary bands, it has the flexibility to offer recruits extra compensation “if we can demonstrate that we can only recruit in the market by paying a little bit more,” he says.
The university’s investment fund is not looking for someone to fill its senior role who is looking for purely commercial return. “They need to be able to think about the strategic part of the university, the translation of the research,” says Hick.
