The wider labour market sets the backdrop, and right now it's cautious. The Low Pay Commission describes conditions as 'low hire, low fire': recruitment is weaker, redundancies are only slightly up, and vacancies have dropped below pre-pandemic levels the Low Pay Commission's 2025 report. For anyone hiring specialist engineers, that means fewer people moving between jobs and a smaller active pool to reach.
Engineering feels this most at the junior end. Entry-level hiring in engineering has fallen to minus 19%, while senior hiring sits at minus 10%, a nine-percentage-point gap GOV.UK's snapshot of entry-level hiring. Fewer juniors coming through today means a thinner pipeline of experienced HMI and controls engineers tomorrow, so the people already doing this work matter more than ever.
There are bright spots. The largest volume increase in vacancies from August to October 2025 came in professional, scientific and technical activities, up by 5,000 ONS vacancy figures for November 2025. Demand hasn't disappeared. It's concentrated, and specialist technical skills are exactly where it's landing Computer Weekly's tech recruitment outlook for 2026.
An HMI developer sits at the point where operators meet the machine. They build the screens, alarms and controls that let a person run a line safely and read what the plant is doing at a glance. The role pulls from software, controls engineering and human factors, so it rarely maps to a single, tidy job title.
Two dynamics shape who you can hire. First, engineering leans on the resident labour force: the vast majority of new engineering hires come from within the UK, so there's low reliance on international recruitment GOV.UK's review of professionals in IT and engineering. You're largely competing for people already here. Second, the entry-level squeeze is real: UK tech cut graduate jobs by 46% in the past year, with a further 53% drop projected figures from the Institute of Student Employers reported by The Register. Growing your own HMI talent is getting harder.
Apprenticeships are one answer worth watching. In AI hiring, apprenticeships have risen from 3% of hires in 2020 to 19% in 2025 the GOV.UK AI Labour Market Survey 2025. The same logic applies to automation: when the experienced pool is tight, structured routes that build skills on the job start to pay off.
Start with the interface, not the tool list. A strong HMI developer can explain how they'd lay out an alarm screen so an operator spots a fault in seconds, not how many packages they've touched. Ask for a walkthrough of a real project: what the operator needed, how they designed the screens, and what changed after go-live. Human factors thinking separates a good hire from a great one.
Then screen for genuine plant-floor experience. HMI work meets SCADA systems, PLC logic and safety requirements, so the best candidates have shipped interfaces that ran in a live environment and can talk about the trade-offs they made. In a low-hire market, many of these people aren't applying to adverts, so plan to reach passive candidates directly rather than wait for inbound applications as the Low Pay Commission's 2025 report describes.
Finally, move quickly and keep the process short. Demand for specialist tech skills is set to drive the market into 2026 according to Computer Weekly, so the strongest engineers won't sit in a slow pipeline. Define the role tightly, cut the number of interview rounds, and give clear feedback fast. Speed and clarity are your biggest advantages when the pool is small.
This is where we come in. We search a database of more than 15 million candidates to find HMI and automation engineers who match your brief, including the experienced people who aren't actively applying. You get a ranked shortlist in under 30 seconds, matched candidates contacted in under a minute, and an interview booked in under three minutes, so a small pool never means a slow process.
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. You pay for the value of finding the right person, not for the search. Tell us what your HMI role needs and see your shortlist today.
