The picture is mixed, and that's the interesting part. Overall vacancy volumes have been under pressure, but the demand is concentrating in specialist, technical corners of the market. In the three months to October 2025, the largest volume increase in vacancies landed in the professional, scientific and technical activities sector, which rose by 5,000 roles according to the ONS vacancies bulletin for November 2025. That's the broad category where much of the automation, engineering and technical design work sits.
Against a subdued economic backdrop through 2025, businesses took a cautious approach to hiring, yet there were clear demand hotspots for specialist skills, including AI, data, enterprise applications and cyber security as Computer Weekly's tech recruitment outlook for 2026 sets out. For industrial automation, those hotspots matter: the roles that keep automated systems running increasingly touch all four.
Demand for AI skills alone increased by nearly 200% in a year, with London accounting for 80% of AI-related job postings per Accenture data reported by The Register. As automation and AI converge on the factory floor, that pull reshapes where automation professionals see their next move.
Two forces are moving talent at once. At the top, specialist and senior demand holds up. IT business analysts, architects and systems designers, a group of around 193,000 workers, are among the occupations in critical demand, with three of five indicators flagged as critical in 2025 according to the Occupations in Demand 2025 release on GOV.UK. These are the people who design and integrate the systems automation depends on.
At the entry level, the ground is shifting. In engineering, entry-level hiring has fallen to -19% while senior hiring sits at -10%, a nine-percentage-point gap per the GOV.UK snapshot of entry-level hiring in the UK. The wider signal is similar: Adzuna recorded a 30% drop in UK entry-level job postings since ChatGPT launched, with graduates facing the toughest market since 2018 as techUK reports. UK tech graduate jobs were cut by 46% in a year according to Institute of Student Employers figures via The Register.
So where does the next generation of automation talent come from? Increasingly, from apprenticeships. In AI hiring, apprenticeships have risen from 3% of hires in 2020 to 19% in 2025 per the DSIT AI Labour Market Survey 2025. That's a route worth watching for controls, robotics and instrumentation roles too.
Adjacent sectors are also competing for the same engineering and controls skills. The defence sector remained an attractive employer, with surveyed recruitment growing by 17.8% in 2022 according to GOV.UK, and MOD expenditure with industry supported 272,000 direct jobs in 2023/24, an 11% rise on the year before per MOD supported employment estimates. When defence hires, it draws on the same pool automation employers need.
Start by hiring for the bridge, not the badge. The value now sits with people who connect software and physical systems: someone who understands PLCs and control logic and can work with data pipelines and AI models. Given how sharply specialist demand outpaces general roles as the Occupations in Demand 2025 data shows, write job specs around outcomes and skills, not a fixed list of past job titles.
Build your own pipeline. With entry-level engineering hiring down per the GOV.UK entry-level snapshot and apprenticeships climbing fast in adjacent technical fields according to the AI Labour Market Survey 2025, employers who invest in apprentices and early-career development now will have controls and automation talent that competitors cannot simply buy in later.
Move quickly and think nationally. For engineering professionals, pay on the Skilled Worker route is broadly in line with the UK average according to the Migration Advisory Committee's report on professionals in IT and engineering, while AI demand concentrates heavily in London per Accenture data. If you can hire beyond the capital and reach candidates fast, you widen your options considerably.
This is where we come in. We search a database of 15 million candidates to find people with the specific automation, controls and data skills your roles need, then we manage the process end to end so you can keep the line running. 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. The 8% reflects the value of finding the right person and handling recruitment from first search to signed offer. Ready to see who's out there? Start a search with us today.
