What does industrial automation hiring look like right now?

The picture is tight and getting tighter. In 2025 there were 55,000 unfilled long-term vacancies in UK manufacturing, costing the economy £6bn in lost output every year, according to Make UK – Industrial Strategy Skills Commission Report 2025. That's a lot of open control rooms and unstaffed lines.

The wider labour market is cautious too. The Low Pay Commission Report 2025 describes conditions as 'low hire, low fire', with weaker recruitment and vacancies dropping below pre-pandemic levels Low Pay Commission Report 2025, GOV.UK. Employers are hiring carefully, which makes every automation hire count more.

Meanwhile the technology that fills control rooms is advancing faster than the workforce. Make UK's AI, Skills and the Future of UK Manufacturing report found over 50% of manufacturers cite skills shortages as the main barrier to AI adoption, and only 2% say AI is widely embedded across their operations The Manufacturer / Make UK – AI, Skills and the Future of UK Manufacturing. The demand is real, but the people to run these systems are scarce.

Which roles and skills are AI copilots creating?

Copilots don't remove the engineer from the control room. They change what the engineer does there. The job shifts from turning every dial to supervising systems, checking the AI's suggestions and stepping in with judgement when readings look off. That means demand for people who can read data and understand the plant at the same time.

The direction of travel is clear in the data. Make UK's 2030 Skills: Closing the Gap report found six in ten (59%) manufacturers cite automation and half (50%) cite wider digitalisation as trends changing jobs and skills needs, while 74% expect demand for cognitive and meta-cognitive skills, the ability to reason, learn and adapt, to increase by 2030 Make UK – 2030 Skills: Closing the Gap.

Broader AI demand is surging around these roles. The Register, citing Accenture data, reports demand for AI skills rose nearly 200% in a year The Register (Accenture data). But the entry routes are narrowing: GOV.UK's snapshot of entry-level hiring shows engineering entry-level hiring has fallen to -19% while senior hiring sits at -10%, a nine-percentage-point gap GOV.UK - A snapshot of entry-level hiring in the UK. Fewer junior openings today risks a thinner pipeline of control-room engineers tomorrow.

There's a bright spot on training. The GOV.UK AI Labour Market Survey 2025 shows apprenticeships have risen from 3% of AI hires in 2020 to 19% in 2025 GOV.UK / DSIT – AI Labour Market Survey 2025 report. Growing your own automation talent is becoming a mainstream route, not a fallback.

How do you hire well in industrial automation?

Start by hiring for judgement, not just tool knowledge. A copilot can flag an anomaly, but someone still has to decide what to do about it. Test how a person reasons under pressure and how they respond when the data and their instinct disagree. Those cognitive skills are exactly what Make UK's 2030 skills research expects to matter most by 2030 Make UK – 2030 Skills: Closing the Gap.

• Write role profiles around supervising and improving automated systems, not just operating fixed equipment.
• Look for hybrids: people who mix data literacy with hands-on plant or engineering experience.
• Open an apprenticeship or upskilling route to build the talent you cannot buy off the shelf.
• Protect your junior pipeline now, so you still have senior control-room engineers in five years.
• Recruit mostly from the domestic workforce, where most engineering hires already come from.

That last point matters for planning. GOV.UK's review of professionals in IT and engineering finds the vast majority of new engineering hires come from the resident labour force, indicating low reliance on international recruitment GOV.UK - Professionals in IT and engineering. Your next automation engineer is most likely already in the UK, so the task is finding and reaching them quickly.

Speed helps, but only alongside specialism. Computer Weekly's tech recruitment outlook for 2026 notes that against a subdued 2025 backdrop, demand hotspots remained for specialist skills including AI and data Computer Weekly (tech recruitment outlook 2026). In a low-hire market, moving fast on the right specialist beats casting a wide net.

Where does an AI recruitment agent fit for automation employers?

This is where we help. We search a database of 15 million candidates to find people with the automation, data and engineering mix your control room needs, and we manage the process end to end so your team can stay on the plant. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost, through Reed.ai. Ready to build your control-room team? Tell us the role and we'll get started today.