Meet Our Team
Mark O’Brien
Founder and CEO
- Location UK & Europe - USA & Canada - New Zealand
- Team Leadership
Hi, I’m Mark, Founder and CEO of Warman O’Brien.
With over 20 years of experience in Life Sciences recruitment, I have evolved into an expert in helping Life Sciences professionals find the right job.
I’m a true believer in the ‘people first’ philosophy, which helps me to find the perfect match for both clients and candidates.
I first started working in IT recruitment but realised that Life Science had such niche skillsets that clients found difficult to find and then I learned to become a specialist in Biometrics over the years.
Since 2005, I have regularly attended Life Sciences conferences, such as PHUSE and PSI, which have given me the exceptional opportunity to connect and network with numerous professionals and industry leaders from all over the world.
As my career progressed, I learned more about recruiting top-notch Statisticians, SAS Programmers, and Clinical Data Managers across Europe and North America. I have developed leadership skills, mentoring, coaching and working collaboratively which I think are key skills when running a business. Influencing and networking have been other skills which have helped us become such a specialist Life Science recruitment business.
In 2017, my wife Caroline and I launched Warman O’Brien. Since then, we expanded globally and successfully placed candidates in +25 countries. One of the main reasons to launch our recruitment agency was not just using my vast recruitment experience in Biometrics, but having the opportunity to combine the industry knowledge of my wife who worked for the largest CRO for 15 years.
I have always tried to lead from the front to show what is possible in a recruitment career and having a strong work ethic and a positive attitude can go a long way in this industry.
When I am not recruiting, I am training to do my first half ironman in August back in Ireland. So it’s been helpful working a 4-day week, therefore, spending Fridays doing longer training runs and cycles.