Clinical Research Coordinator job description

The Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps no wage line of its own for clinical research coordinators. It counts them inside natural sciences managers, SOC 11-9121, and that group's May 2025 numbers, across 108,690 workers: $167,220 at the group's midpoint, $79,710 at its tenth percentile. Those figures belong to an occupation group named for the managers of scientific programs, so read them as context for the field rather than as a coordinator's salary. O*NET describes the work itself as planning, directing, or coordinating clinical research projects, directing the staff who carry out a protocol, and often evaluating and analyzing the resulting data. Postings for the same job also run under clinical trial coordinator, clinical research administrator, and research coordinator.

Core Duties and Responsibilities

Scheduling comes first, booking subjects for the appointments, procedures, and inpatient stays a protocol calls for. Just behind it come the hands-on parts, interviewing subjects, taking vital signs, running electrocardiograms, and screening for eligibility through medical record reviews and conversations with treating physicians and nurses. Documentation carries equal weight. Coordinators draft protocol worksheets, procedural manuals, and institutional review board paperwork, record adverse events and confer with investigators on reporting them to oversight agencies, and keep informed consent, case report forms, and drug dispensation records in order.

Common Skills and Technologies

Coordinators read dense protocols, interview subjects, and write up what happened for a regulator, and the skill list says exactly that: writing, active listening, and reading comprehension at the top, then social perceptiveness and coordination. Employers name clinical trial management systems for the study itself and Microsoft Project for the schedule; the analysis end of the work brings SAS, IBM SPSS Statistics, MATLAB, Python, and R.

Education, Training, and Career Path

Credentials here are looser than Job Zone 4 suggests: a bachelor's covers 60 percent of coordinators, and the others arrive from a certificate program, some college, or nothing past high school. Experience is the real gate, and the zone assumes plenty of it behind whatever the credential says. One reported title, clinical research nurse coordinator, marks the nursing route in; clinical research manager and clinical trial manager mark the step up.

Sources: O*NET 30.0, 11-9121.01 Clinical Research Coordinators, https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/11-9121.01. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, 11-9121, https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes119121.htm.