Tight. 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. Engineering feels it most sharply: 76% of engineering employers struggle to recruit for key roles, with technical and specialist sustainability skills topping the list, reports the Institution of Engineering and Technology.
Employers are clear on the cause. Skills shortages (75%), recruitment (36%) and talent retention (32%) are the top barriers to growth, found Barclays Corporate's research on the manufacturing skills shortage. So the roles that sit at the centre of automation, like controls engineering, are the hardest to fill and the fastest to change.
Automation and digitalisation are rewriting the job. Six in ten (59%) manufacturers cited automation and half (50%) cited wider digitalisation as trends changing jobs and skills needs, and 74% expect demand for cognitive and meta-cognitive skills to increase by 2030, reports Make UK's 2030 Skills: Closing the Gap. For a controls engineer, that means moving beyond PLC code and panel wiring into networking, data, cybersecurity and whole-line integration, the work systems integrators now bring into most projects.
There is plenty of room to grow. The UK ranks just 24th in global robotics density, and targeted innovation and digital investment could add £150 billion to the UK's GDP by 2035, according to Make UK's Making it Smarter report. That gap is echoed in older data: UK utilisation of industrial robots substantially lagged internationally at only 101 robots per 10,000 workers in 2020, per the Smart Machines Strategy 2035. As more lines automate, the integrator mindset, connecting machines, software and data, becomes the core of the controls engineer role.
The barrier is people, not technology. 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, reports The Manufacturer, drawing on Make UK research. The engineers who can bridge operational technology and IT are the ones who turn investment into output.
Start by writing the job for where it's going, not where it was. Blend the fundamentals, PLC and SCADA, with the newer demands: industrial networking, data handling and cybersecurity. Many manufacturers are closing the gap internally, too. 40% of manufacturers are looking to upskill their existing workforce, specifically for redeployment as a result of automation and digitalisation, and that figure rises for firms with more than 1,000 employees, finds Make UK's Executive Survey 2026. So treat hiring and upskilling as one plan.
We built Reed.ai to make this kind of specialist hiring fast and fair. We search 15 million candidates to find the controls and integration engineers who match your real scope, then rank a shortlist in under 30 seconds, contact matched people in under a minute and can book an interview 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 us what your next controls engineer needs to do, and we'll surface the people who can do it.
