The short answer: it's tight, and it's getting tighter. 76% of engineering employers struggle to recruit for key roles, with technical and specialist sustainability skills topping the list, according to the Institution of Engineering and Technology's 2025 skills research. For a panel shop making its first design hire, that means you're competing with every other manufacturer for the same scarce talent.
The scale of the gap is real. There were 55,000 unfilled long-term vacancies in UK manufacturing in 2025, costing the economy £6bn in lost output every year, as Make UK's Industrial Strategy Skills Commission Report 2025 sets out. And skills shortages sit at the top of the list of barriers to growth for 75% of manufacturers, with recruitment itself cited by 36%, in Barclays Corporate's analysis of the UK manufacturing skills shortage. So before you write the job advert, it helps to know the odds you're working against.
Because the work itself is changing. Six in ten (59%) manufacturers cited automation and half (50%) cited wider digitalisation as trends reshaping jobs and skills needs, and 74% expect demand for cognitive and meta-cognitive skills to increase by 2030, according to Make UK's 2030 Skills: Closing the Gap report. A panel shop's first designer isn't just drawing schematics any more; they're the person who connects your builds to automation and smarter data.
This isn't a short-term blip. Occupations in digital, engineering and construction have the greatest additional employment demand between 2025 and 2030, as Skills England's assessment of priority skills to 2030 identifies. The same picture holds in Skills England's annual skills report 2026, where digital and engineering occupations appear most commonly among priority roles already facing high recruitment demand. In other words, the designer you hire now will only get harder to find later.
There's an AI angle too, and it cuts both ways. 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, per The Manufacturer's coverage of the Make UK AI and skills report. So the right first designer helps you build panels today and lays the groundwork for the automation work coming next.
Start with volume. Count your monthly design outputs: how many control panel layouts, electrical schematics and bills of materials you produce, and how much time goes into revisions, customer approvals and site queries. One designer handling a steady flow of standard builds looks very different from one supporting bespoke, one-off panels. Map the real hours before you decide on seniority.
Then layer in direction. If automation and digitalisation are on your roadmap, you want someone who can grow into that, not just clear today's drawing queue. Be clear about the software they'll live in, usually a CAD or ECAD package such as EPLAN or AutoCAD Electrical, plus the standards they must work to. Scope the role so it covers your current volume with headroom, so the person has somewhere to grow rather than a job that stays flat.
Move quickly and look internally where you can. The vast majority of new hires in engineering come from the resident labour force, indicating low reliance on international recruitment, as GOV.UK's review of professionals in IT and engineering notes. That means your pool is largely domestic, so speed and a clear offer matter more than a wide net.
Watch the retention risk from day one. 79% of UK technical professionals plan to change employers in 2026, according to Rise Technical's 2025/26 Insights Report, surveying over 500 employers and 1000 candidates. That churn is a chance as well as a threat: good people are open to moving, so a sharp, well-scoped role gets noticed. Mind the pipeline too, because in engineering, entry-level hiring has fallen to -19% while senior hiring sits at -10%, a 9-percentage-point gap, per GOV.UK's snapshot of entry-level hiring in the UK. If you can hire slightly earlier in a career and train up, you widen your options.
When you've scoped the role, we help you fill it. We search 15 million candidates, rank a shortlist in under 30 seconds, contact matched people in under a minute and can have an interview booked in under three minutes. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost. Tell Reed.ai what your first electrical designer needs to do, and we'll surface people who can do it. Start your shortlist today.
