A look at what’s hiring in the non-clinical job market for rehab clinicians, and what the data means for your next move.
If you’re a physical therapist, occupational therapist, speech-language pathologist, or assistant trying to figure out where the non-clinical opportunities are right now, you’re in the right place. Each quarter, we comb through what’s coming across our job board to bring you a clear-eyed look at who’s hiring, what they’re hiring for, and where you might fit in.
A quick but important note before we get into the numbers: this data reflects what’s posted on The Non-Clinical Job Board, not the entire non-clinical job market. Think of it as a curated window into employer demand for rehab folks, designed to help you focus your search on real, vetted opportunities.
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Job Volume: A Big First Quarter
We posted 5,372 non-clinical jobs in Q1 2026. That’s more than double Q4 2025’s postings, and over five times what we posted in Q1 2025.
The context here is important. This is not a claim that the broader non-clinical job market doubled. The growth you’re seeing is the result of sustained investment we’ve been making in our proprietary sourcing technology. That investment has driven steady quarter-over-quarter growth in our job board for five quarters running. Better tech means we can surface more roles faster, while simultaneously improving quality.
That aside, here’s what we can say: anecdotally, we have not seen non-clinical demand for rehab professionals shrinking, even as the broader job market has been challenging across most sectors. Healthcare continues to drive the most consistent employment growth in the U.S. economy. And the “picks-and-shovels” companies (the medical device manufacturers, health tech firms, payers, and post-acute care systems that supply the tools, products, and services clinicians depend on) are still hiring people who deeply understand patient care.
Your clinical background remains genuinely valuable to a wide range of employers. The data we’re about to walk you through reflects that.
Job Postings Are Moving Fast: Why Speed Matters
Here’s a piece of data we haven’t shared in past reports: 45% of jobs we found in Q1 expired within two weeks.
Read that again. Almost half of the non-clinical roles we surface to our community come and go in 14 days or less.
For most rehab professionals making a non-clinical transition, that’s a real problem. Writing a resume from scratch, figuring out the right way to position your clinical background, and tailoring it for each application all take time. The key to a successful search is being ready ahead of time.
This is exactly why we created Non-Clinical 101.
Our flagship course is designed to help you become application-ready before the perfect role appears, so when it does, you can move on it without the panic. That includes:
- Choosing a new career path and taking on initiatives that signal to hiring managers you’re invested
- ATS-friendly resume templates for all 27 non-clinical career paths in the course
- A CV-first approach that will allow you to customize your resume for a new application in under 30 minutes
On top of that, Non-Clinical 101 students and Go Non-Clinical community members get access to new job postings two full weeks before our public newsletter list does. When 45% of jobs expire in two weeks, that head start is the difference between applying and missing out.
Employment Type: Mostly Full-Time, with Some Flexibility
Full-time roles dominated Q1 by a wide margin, which is what we’d expect for the kinds of corporate, post-acute, and managed care employers driving non-clinical hiring.
But here’s a small note worth flagging if flexibility is part of your strategy: PRN, per-diem, contract, part-time, and temporary roles together represented around 9% of postings. That’s a modest slice, but for rehab pros looking to bridge into non-clinical work while still doing some patient care (a smart play for a lot of folks), those options exist.
Where the Non-Clinical Work Actually Happens
The work setting breakdown might be the single most useful chart in this report for setting realistic expectations.
Field roles led the quarter at about a third of all postings. That includes territory sales reps, clinical specialists who travel to hospital accounts, and clinical liaisons driving referrals to post-acute facilities. On-site roles came in second, which captures the traditional 9-to-5, Monday-Friday in the office type of work.
If you came into your non-clinical search picturing a fully remote job, you should know: 83% of Q1 postings involve being somewhere in person, at least most of the time. For a lot of rehab pros, that ends up being a positive instead of a downside. Field and hybrid roles get you out of the four walls of the clinic without trapping you behind a desk all day.
Remote work is available too, and the chart shows it appearing in several configurations: fully remote, mostly-field with some remote, on-site/remote hybrid, and multi-modal arrangements. Add them all up, and roughly 43% of Q1 postings included some remote component.
Fully remote alone made up just 17% of the total, and remote roles are far more competitive than in-person ones. The applicant pool is bigger because geography stops being a filter. If remote is your top priority, we strongly recommend using professional help to gain an edge. The difference between “applying to remote jobs” and “actually landing one” usually comes down to strategy, preparation, and positioning.
Starter and Experienced Roles: Both Grew Significantly
The mix between starter jobs and experienced roles shifted this quarter. Since we added experienced jobs to The Non-Clinical Job Board in Q3 last year, they’ve grown in share to 42%.
But the more important story is in the absolute numbers: both categories grew compared to any previous quarter we’ve reported on. Starter roles nearly doubled from Q4 to Q1. Experienced roles almost tripled.
Whether you’re making your first move out of patient care or planning your second (or third) non-clinical step up, there are more opportunities on our board for you than ever before.
Salary Insights: What Non-Clinical Jobs Pay
One of the most common worries we hear from rehab pros considering a non-clinical move is: “Will I have to take a pay cut?” Our Q1 data aims to answer that transparently.
A quick note on methodology
About 46% of Q1 job postings included salary or hourly compensation data, and that’s the dataset we’re working with here. A few things shaped our approach:
- Employers often post broad ranges as a hiring strategy, so we calculated the midpoint of each job’s posted range, then averaged the midpoints. This produces, we hope, the most representative data point for the average employee in the average job.
- We only included full-time jobs. Where those roles were paid hourly, we annualized based on a 40-hour work week.
- One quarter of all postings were sales roles, and many of those only disclosed base salary (not total comp including commissions and incentives). That means our reported numbers are actually on the low side.
Treat this as directional, just like the rest of the report. It’s a useful gut check on what’s realistic, not a guarantee for any individual offer.
Salaries for Non-Clinical Starter Jobs
For roles tagged as appropriate for someone making their first non-clinical move:
- Median pay: $75,047 or more (that’s half the jobs)
- Top 25% of postings: $92,000 or more
- Top 10% of postings: $104,650 or more
- The bottom quartile came in at $60,684 or less
A few things stand out. Six-figure compensation is realistically on the table for the strongest starter roles (especially in Sales, where remember, the published data is underrepresentative). The typical starter job lands at $75K, which is competitive with what a lot of rehab clinicians are currently earning, especially once you factor in benefits, predictable schedules, and the absence of productivity quotas.
Salaries for Jobs Requiring Previous Non-Clinical Experience
For roles tagged as appropriate for someone making their second, third, or later non-clinical step:
- Median pay: $113,000 or more (again, half the jobs make at least this)
- Top 25% of postings: $148,200 or more
- Top 10% of postings: $183,475 or more
- The bottom quartile came in at $87,500 or less
That’s roughly a $38K jump in median pay between starter and experienced segments. In other words, the runway matters. Your first non-clinical job is rarely your last, and compensation grows meaningfully as you build experience in your chosen path. The top-10% number ($183K+) tells you what’s possible at the higher end, and remember that figure is understated for Sales roles.
The highest-paying titles in each tier
Zooming into specific job titles, here’s where the strongest median pay landed this quarter:
Starter roles:
- Care Coordinator: $101,400 or more
- Clinical Navigator: $90,000 or more
- Clinical Specialist: $85,000 or more
Experienced roles:
- Product Manager: $148,200 or more
- Project Manager: $117,000 or more
- Customer Success: $108,750 or more
How to use these numbers
If you’re earlier in your transition, focus on landing a starter role with a fair midpoint and a clear path into the experienced tier. If you’re already in the non-clinical world, treat the experienced numbers as your benchmark for what your next move should aim for. And if you’re interviewing for a Sales role, always ask about on-target earnings (OTE), not just base salary. The gap between the two can be substantial.
Top Non-Clinical Career Paths in Q1 2026
The career path data tells a clear story: sales and sales-adjacent roles dominate the non-clinical landscape for rehab professionals.
Sales & Business Development is the single largest category by a wide margin, accounting for roughly a quarter of all jobs we found in Q1. The story doesn’t end there though. Two more career paths sit functionally inside the same engine:
Clinical Trainer/Specialist roles train clinicians on medical devices and serve as the bridge between manufacturers and the hospital staff using their products. Beyond the namesake titles, watch for Field Clinical Representative, Therapy Development Specialist, and Clinical Account Specialist when you’re searching.
Client/Customer Success roles handle retention and relationship management with existing accounts.
Same employers, same industries (medical device, health tech, post-acute care, and managed care), different points along the same customer journey. Together, those three career paths account for roughly 44% of all non-clinical jobs we posted in Q1.
Clinical and Rehab Liaison roles are also sales-flavored, but they’re mostly from post-acute care companies, working to drive admissions and referrals. Physician Liaison and Admissions Coordinator titles fall under this same umbrella, so include those in your search if this path is on your list.
Beyond the sales engine, the data shows strength in:
- Case Management and Care Coordination, patient-navigation roles where rehab pros leverage clinical knowledge to help patients move through complex healthcare systems. Beyond Case Manager and Care Coordinator, expand your search to include Clinical Navigator, Managed Care Coordinator, and Patient Assessment titles.
- Project, Product, & Program Management, which spans Project Manager, Product Manager, Program Manager, Project Coordinator, and Product Owner titles. Worth knowing because three of these (Product Manager/Product Owner and Project Manager) showed up among the highest-paying experienced roles in this report.
Top Non-Clinical Job Titles in Q1 2026
The individual job titles posted most often this quarter reinforce the same patterns we just walked through.
Of the top ten titles, four are fundamentally sales roles: Sales Representative, Territory Manager, Account Manager, and Assistive Technology Professional (that last one is a hybrid sales/clinical-evaluator role at companies like Numotion and Tobii Dynavox).
The non-sales group is anchored by what we’ll call the patient navigation cluster: Case Manager, Care Coordinator, and Clinical Navigator all made the top ten. They share a focus on helping patients move through healthcare systems, but they have different flavors. Case Managers and Care Coordinators tend to lean toward logistics and resource coordination across the care continuum. Clinical Navigators are usually more patient-facing and advocacy-oriented, often based in hospital systems and specialty service lines like oncology. If one of these patient navigation titles speaks to you, the others are worth a look as well.
Top Companies Hiring Non-Clinical Rehab Pros
Once you see the company list, the career path data clicks fully into place.
Five of the top seven hiring companies are medical device giants: Stryker, Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson, Abbott, and Boston Scientific. They map directly to the heavy concentration of sales, clinical specialist, and account manager roles we just walked through.
A few other names worth flagging:
- Humana posted nearly as many roles as our top spot. Their non-clinical hiring runs deep, with volume in Case Manager, Provider Contracting, Utilization Management, and Encounter Data Management roles. As you’ll see in a moment, Humana also dominates the remote category by a wide margin.
- PAM Health and Lifepoint Health represent the post-acute care world, hiring across multiple titles in the patient-navigation and post-acute referral space. PAM Health’s top titles include Clinical and Physician Navigator, Case Manager, Admissions Coordinator, and Clinical Liaison.
- Numotion, one of our hiring partners, sits in the assistive technology space, where rehab professionals (including assistants!) bring expertise that’s hard to replace.
- UnitedHealth Group rounds out the managed care presence alongside Humana.
If you’re drawn to population health or value-based care, watch the managed care names. If you want to leverage clinical expertise in product evaluation or device support, watch the medical device and assistive tech names.
Top Career Paths for Remote Non-Clinical Jobs
Now let’s zoom in on what’s available remotely, since this is undoubtedly the most sought-after.
The remote breakdown by career path looks a bit like the overall breakdown, with notable exceptions: Compliance & QAPI, Client/Customer Success, Data Analytics, and Administration/Management/Operations all show up with disproportionately high remote share relative to their overall volume on our board.
Translation: those career paths are more remote-friendly than most. That makes intuitive sense for the first three. Much of the work in compliance, customer success, and analytics is built around documentation, data, and asynchronous communication, none of which require a specific location. If remote is non-negotiable for you, those paths deserve extra attention.
The Administration/Management/Operations finding is a more pleasant surprise. As remote work has matured across industries, leadership and ops roles that used to require an in-person presence are increasingly being offered as remote. Worth a second look if you’ve assumed leadership positions automatically come with a daily commute.
Top Titles for Remote Non-Clinical Jobs
The chart shows the specific job titles appearing most often in remote postings. A few patterns stand out:
- Customer Success leads the remote title list. That tracks with the broader career path pattern: software, health tech, and SaaS companies hire Customer Success teams in remote-friendly setups by default.
- Sales roles also appear, confirming that not every sales job requires daily windshield time.
Top Companies for Remote Non-Clinical Jobs
If working from home is the priority, these remote employers should anchor your search.
Humana is in a category of its own. They post more remote, non-clinical roles than the next several companies combined.
The medical device companies on the list (Medtronic, Abbott, Johnson & Johnson, Thermo Fisher, Baxter) are great targets for rehab pros who like the industry but don’t want a field-based travel schedule.
Key Takeaways: How to Use this Intel
Choose your target career path, and get involved. Hiring managers want to see some level of investment on your part into the specific role they are looking to fill. A simple online course, or self-education like attending events and talking to folks already in these roles can be all the initiative an employer needs to see to feel comfortable you’re doing something more than running from the clinic. Don’t take our word for it — check out March’s blog post: How to Get a Non-Clinical Job: Advice From the Hiring Managers Making the Decisions.
If you want remote work, build a strategy and not just a wishlist. The roles are there, but competition is real. Target the specific career paths and companies where remote work is most concentrated, use the job titles we listed for search, and invest in the prep work that makes your application stand out.
Be ready before the role appears. With nearly half of postings expiring in two weeks, the rehab pros who land non-clinical roles are the ones with their resumes already tailored, their LinkedIn profiles already polished, and their interview answers already rehearsed. Game-time prep is too slow in this market.
Whatever your next step looks like, we’re in your corner. Your clinical training and patient-care experience open these doors. The work is in figuring out which one to walk through.
Want access to The Non-Clinical Job Board including first dibs on fresh jobs, a complete roadmap for your transition, and a community of 2.2k fellow rehab pros making the switch? Visit Go Non-Clinical to learn more about Non-Clinical 101 and community membership.
Just curious for now? Sign up for our free newsletter and we’ll send you new non-clinical job postings every Sunday (two weeks after our members see them).
