It's tight, and the pressure is building. The Institution of Engineering and Technology found that 76% of engineering employers struggle to recruit for key roles, with technical and specialist sustainability skills topping the list the Institution of Engineering and Technology (2025). That matters for property software, where teams now blend core software engineering with building-performance and energy data know-how.
Demand isn't easing either. Skills England found that occupations in digital, adult social care, construction and engineering have the greatest additional employment demand between 2025 and 2030 Skills England's assessment of priority skills to 2030 (2025). Its latest report adds that digital, engineering and construction occupations appear most commonly among priority occupations, many already seeing high recruitment demand and expected to keep growing strongly the Skills England annual skills report 2026. Property software sits right where those three overlap.
The brief is widening at both ends. Entry-level hiring in engineering has fallen to -19% while senior hiring sits at -10%, a nine-percentage-point gap GOV.UK's snapshot of entry-level hiring in the UK (2026). So early-career routes are tightening faster than senior ones, which makes it harder to build a pipeline for the junior-to-mid roles property software teams lean on.
Retention is the other half of the story. Rise Technical's 2025/26 Insights Report found that 79% of UK technical professionals plan to change employers in 2026, drawing on a survey of over 500 employers and 1,000 candidates Rise Technical's 2025/26 Insights Report. With that much movement, keeping your current engineers matters as much as attracting new ones.
One structural point helps planning. For the engineering profession, the vast majority of new hires come from the resident labour force, indicating low reliance on international recruitment GOV.UK's review of professionals in IT and engineering (2025). In short, most of your talent is already here in the UK, so your hiring strategy should be built around reaching it well.
Start with the skills, not the job title. Property software roles now mix software engineering with sustainability and building-performance data, so write the brief around the capabilities you actually need. That keeps you open to people from adjacent sectors who can transfer their skills, which widens the pool when 76% of employers are already struggling to recruit the IET (2025).
Then move quickly and plan for the long term. With 79% of technical professionals planning to move in 2026, a slow process loses good people before you've even met them Rise Technical's 2025/26 Insights Report. Because entry-level hiring is down more sharply than senior hiring, invest in your own junior pipeline now rather than waiting to buy in senior talent later GOV.UK (2026). And since most hires come from the resident labour force, focus your effort on reaching UK candidates fast and treating them well through the process GOV.UK (2025).
We search a database of 15 million candidates to find people with the right mix of software and sustainability skills, and we manage recruitment end to end. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost. Tell us your brief and we'll start building your shortlist.
