It's tight, and the data leaves little room for doubt. The Institution of Engineering and Technology found in 2025 that 76% of engineering employers struggle to recruit for key roles, with technical and specialist sustainability skills topping the list. Controls engineering sits right in that gap, because it blends automation, software and hands-on systems knowledge that few people hold at once.
The demand is set to keep climbing. Skills England's assessment of priority skills to 2030 places engineering among the occupations with the greatest additional employment demand between 2025 and 2030. A year on, the Skills England annual skills report 2026 confirms engineering occupations appear most commonly among priority roles, many already facing high recruitment demand and expected to keep growing strongly.
The cost of leaving these roles open is real. Make UK's Industrial Strategy Skills Commission Report 2025 counted 55,000 unfilled long-term vacancies in UK manufacturing in 2025, costing the economy £6bn in lost output every year. Every empty controls seat is a line that runs slower than it should.
Two forces collide. First, demand is rising as factories automate. Make UK's 2030 Skills: Closing the Gap report found six in ten (59%) manufacturers cited automation and half (50%) cited wider digitalisation as trends changing their jobs and skills needs, with 74% expecting demand for cognitive and meta-cognitive skills to increase by 2030. Controls engineers are the people who make automation work, so they feel that pull first.
Second, the people you want are already moving. Rise Technical's 2025/26 Insights Report, surveying over 500 employers and 1,000 candidates, found 79% of UK technical professionals plan to change employers in 2026. That churn is an opportunity if you're ready to move quickly, and a risk if you're not.
There's also a supply squeeze at the start of the pipeline. GOV.UK's snapshot of entry-level hiring in the UK shows engineering entry-level hiring has fallen to -19% while senior hiring sits at -10%, a 9-percentage-point gap. Fewer juniors coming through today means fewer experienced controls engineers tomorrow.
It means your technology plans depend on your people plans. 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. Without controls and automation talent, the business case for AI stalls on the factory floor.
Skills shortages sit at the top of the growth worry list too. Barclays Corporate's research on the skills shortage in UK manufacturing found manufacturers rank skills shortages (75%), recruitment (36%) and talent retention (32%) as their biggest barriers to growth. Hiring well and keeping people are now two sides of the same problem.
Many employers are responding by building talent as well as buying it. The Make UK Executive Survey 2026 found 40% of manufacturers are looking to upskill their existing workforce for redeployment as automation and digitalisation reshape roles, a figure that rises at firms with more than 1,000 employees. Upskilling and smart hiring work best together.
Start by cutting the vague job description. Name the exact platforms, PLC brands, SCADA systems and safety standards the role touches, and separate the skills that are essential from the ones a strong hire can pick up. That clarity turns a wishlist into a scorecard, and a scorecard is what removes guesswork from a shortlist.
Then hire against the market, not against instinct. With 79% of technical professionals open to moving in 2026, per Rise Technical's 2025/26 Insights Report, the best people rarely stay available for long. Move fast, keep your process short, and give feedback within days rather than weeks.
Finally, widen your search beyond the people actively applying. The person who fits your controls role best may not be looking at your advert, but they may be open to the right conversation. Reaching passive talent at speed is where most hiring processes lose ground.
An AI recruitment agent takes the guesswork out of exactly this kind of hire. It searches a database of 15 million candidates, matches on the skills you name rather than the keywords on a CV, and hands you a ranked shortlist you can act on. 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. Tell us what your controls role needs, and we'll surface the people who fit. Start today.
