The picture is tight, and it has been for a while. 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's Industrial Strategy Skills Commission Report 2025. Those gaps hit hardest in the skilled engineering roles that retrofit projects depend on.
Demand for professional, scientific and technical work is holding up too. In August to October 2025, the largest volume increase in vacancies was in the professional, scientific and technical activities sector, which rose by 5,000, per the ONS Vacancies and jobs in the UK bulletin. Integrators sit inside that demand, and retrofit work is a growing share of it.
The reason is simple. Rather than build new lines, many manufacturers are upgrading what they already own: new controls on old machines, better connectivity, and digital layers over existing plant. That shifts the skill set integrators need to hire for.
Retrofit is a digital and automation story first. Six in ten (59%) manufacturers cited automation and half (50%) cited wider digitalisation as trends changing jobs and skills needs, while 74% expect demand for cognitive and meta-cognitive skills to increase by 2030, according to Make UK's 2030 Skills: Closing the Gap report. In plain terms, integrators need people who can diagnose, adapt and problem-solve across old and new systems, not just install to a fixed spec.
That means controls engineers who can read legacy PLC code, SCADA and networking specialists who can connect ageing equipment, and integration engineers comfortable working between mechanical, electrical and software layers. The scarce skill is the bridge: making decades-old hardware talk to modern software.
The talent pipeline is under pressure at the entry point. Adzuna has seen a 30% drop in UK entry-level job postings since ChatGPT's launch, with graduates facing the toughest market since 2018, per techUK's analysis of entry-level and graduate jobs. For integrators, that makes growing your own talent more important, not less.
There is a route worth watching. Apprenticeships have risen from 3% of AI hires in 2020 to 19% in 2025, according to the DSIT AI Labour Market Survey 2025. The same logic applies to controls and automation: apprenticeships let you build the exact retrofit skills you struggle to buy in.
Start with the project, not the job title. Retrofit roles blur the old boundaries, so write specs around what someone will actually do: which legacy platforms they will touch, which modern controls they will integrate, and how much diagnosis versus new-build the work involves. That clarity attracts the right people and filters out the wrong ones fast.
Speed matters most of all. With 55,000 long-term manufacturing vacancies unfilled as Make UK reports, the best retrofit engineers are rarely on the market for long. A slow process is the quickest way to lose them.
This is where we come in. We search 15 million candidates and rank a shortlist in under 30 seconds, so you spend your time talking to the people who fit the project, not sifting CVs. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost. It is a simple way to find the right retrofit engineer and keep your projects moving. Tell us what your next project needs today.
