The picture is one of demand outpacing supply for technical skills. 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 The Manufacturer and Make UK's 2026 report. That gap matters for anyone running a plant, because tuning control loops still leans on people who understand the process, not just the software.
The automation story is uneven too. 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 Make UK's Making it Smarter report. On the shop floor, UK utilisation of industrial robots substantially lags internationally, using only 101 robots per 10,000 workers in 2020 the government's Smart Machines Strategy 2035. Fewer machines running autonomously means more loops that a person has to watch, set and correct.
The roles are shifting from routine operation towards oversight, interpretation and problem solving. 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 Make UK's 2030 Skills report. In plain terms: thinking, judgement and the ability to reason about a process are the skills employers need now.
Control loop tuning sits right in that group. It is a judgement call because it blends knowledge of the physical process, the instruments and the way a plant behaves under load. Those are exactly the cognitive skills the data points to, and they are hard to automate away. So the people who hold them become more valuable as the rest of the plant gets smarter.
Start by deciding what you build and what you buy. 40% of manufacturers are looking to upskill their existing workforce, specifically for redeployment as a result of automation and digitalisation, and that figure increases for firms with more than 1,000 employees Make UK's Executive Survey 2026. Upskilling works well for people who already know your plant. External hiring works better when you need a skill you simply do not have in the building.
When you do go to market, write the role around the judgement, not the job title. Describe the processes, the control systems and the kind of problems the person will solve, because that is what a strong control engineer reads first. Test for reasoning in the interview: give a real tuning scenario and listen to how the person works through it. And move quickly, because people with these skills rarely stay on the market for long.
This is where we help. We search a database of 15 million candidates to find people with the control, instrumentation and process skills your plant needs, and we manage the recruitment end to end so your team stays focused on the floor. 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. If you are hiring for a control or automation role now, tell us what good looks like and we will start the search.
