Which path to choose?

After nearly a year after getting laid off, I have a couple of new job offers! I’m struggling to decide how to decide which one to pursue though. For context, I’ve been in pharma/biotech for around 8-9 years. My last 3 roles have all been scientist roles either in larger biopharmaceutical firms or one stint at a cell therapy start up. I’ve spent majority of my career in early discovery groups, where I was building, optimizing and executing in vitro assays; mainly high throughput small molecule screening but also a lot of gene editing work. I’ve also worked on preclinical development of CAR-T products so very familiar with CAR-T characterization techniques, in process testing and release assays.

I have two offers:

1. An associate research scientist role at a clinical healthcare/medical device company; still pretty substantial operation but not as well known as some big Pharma names. The role would be housed in the cellular therapies division and would be mainly involve evaluating process development changes, testing new reagents/technologies and helping to improve CAR-T manufacturing workflows on cell processing instruments they produce. The ultimate goal of the group is to try and build tools/systems to enable for rapid bedside cell therapy manufacturing. The annual compensation is good enough but not super competitive, the benefits are slightly less appealing but on paper the role is hybrid so would only require me to commute to site 3 days/week. However, this is still a bench-facing role so this could obviously fluctuate.

2. Scientist II at a biopharma industry giant. The role would be in the analytical development organization, specifically focusing on developing cellular potency assays for mRNA-LNP therapeutics. It would be a big shift from the world early drug discovery and target validation but honestly I think I’m ready for more steady/routine lab work that is closer to having tangible clinical impact. I think this role would open up more doors in the future, given the pivot to AD and having the chance to work with LNPs and mRNA therapeutics. Given the shift towards generic medicines, it seems prudent to have exposure to these modalities on my resume. The compensation is significantly better than role 1 as well (~20% more total). It would likely be in 5 days/week but have some flexibility for WFH days if requested, but not baked in like with the other role.

I would have to commute ~1-1.5 hours each way for either of these roles but role 2 would be slightly easier when utilizing public transportation. At this point in my career, the allure of having a hybrid schedule is really tempting and something I would sacrifice some amount of compensation for. Both roles would be different than what I was doing before but I think building experience in analytical development might be more useful for future opportunities. I realize I’m super privileged to even have this dilemma but am feeling torn and would love to get any sort of feedback on this!