The brief for automotive suppliers is changing faster than many hiring plans. Six in ten (59%) manufacturers cited automation and half (50%) cited wider digitalisation as trends reshaping jobs and skills needs, with 74% expecting demand for cognitive and meta-cognitive skills to increase by 2030 Make UK – 2030 Skills: Closing the Gap. Software-defined vehicles sit right in the middle of that shift, where the value moves from the metal to the code that runs it.
The pressure is real and measurable. There were 55,000 unfilled long-term vacancies in UK manufacturing in 2025, costing the economy £6bn in lost output every year Make UK – Industrial Strategy Skills Commission Report 2025. Manufacturers rank skills shortages (75%), recruitment (36%) and talent retention (32%) as their top barriers to growth Barclays Corporate – Skills shortage in UK Manufacturing. When the product gains a software layer, those gaps get harder to close with the old brief.
Software-defined vehicles pull digital roles into teams that used to be mostly mechanical. Occupations in Digital, Adult Social Care, Construction and Engineering have the greatest additional employment demand between 2025 and 2030 GOV.UK - Assessment of priority skills to 2030 (Skills England). For suppliers, that means embedded software engineers, data specialists and systems integrators now sit alongside the people who design the physical parts.
Finding that mix is the hard part. Some 76% of engineering employers struggle to recruit for key roles, with technical and specialist sustainability skills topping the list Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET). The barrier runs deeper than recruitment, too: over 50% of manufacturers cite skills shortages as the main blocker to AI adoption, and only 2% say AI is widely embedded across their operations The Manufacturer / Make UK – AI, Skills and the Future of UK Manufacturing. The talent you need for software-defined vehicles is the same talent every sector is chasing.
Start by rewriting the brief, not just the job title. A role that used to call for mechanical expertise may now need someone who can read code, work with data and move between physical and digital systems. Build in both: 40% of manufacturers are looking to upskill their existing workforce, specifically for redeployment as a result of automation and digitalisation, a figure that rises for firms with more than 1,000 employees Make UK Executive Survey 2026. Pairing a sharper hiring brief with upskilling gives you two routes to the same skills.
Then widen your search. The UK still lags on automation, using only 101 industrial robots per 10,000 workers in 2020 according to the International Federation of Robotics Smart Machines Strategy 2035 - GOV.UK, so the people who can bridge hardware and software are in short supply and worth reaching beyond your usual pools. Move quickly when you find them, keep the process tight, and be clear about the problems they'll get to solve. In a market this competitive, speed and clarity win.
When the brief widens from mechanical to digital, you need to search wider and move faster. We search a database of 15 million candidates to find the people who can bridge engineering, code and data, then manage the process end to end so you can keep building. 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 the role you're trying to fill and we'll get started today.
