Study start-up jobs — where trials are won or lost.

What start-up actually covers

Feasibility (which countries and sites can realistically enroll), site selection and qualification, regulatory submissions to each country's authority, IRB/ethics approvals, site contracts and budgets, and the green light that moves a site from "selected" to "open for enrollment". SSU teams are measured in cycle times — days from first contact to first patient in.

Who thrives here

Organized chasers. The job is running many parallel site timelines, unblocking documents, and pushing politely until approvals land. Many start-up people come from CTA or regulatory-support seats; RASSU (regulatory affairs study start-up) roles blend this work with regulatory affairs and are listed on both sides of this site.

Questions

Is start-up a good first clinical job? It's one of the best — you learn every document and every deadline in a trial's lifecycle before any patient is enrolled, and senior start-up people are scarce.

What's the difference between start-up and site activation? They overlap: activation is the tail end of start-up — getting an approved site actually open and ready to screen patients.

Do start-up jobs exist outside big CROs? Yes — sponsors run internal start-up teams, and site networks hire activation staff for their own clinics.