Demand is high and talent is tight. 76% of engineering employers struggle to recruit for key roles, with technical and specialist sustainability skills topping the list, according to the Institution of Engineering and Technology's 2025 skills research. That pressure is not a short-term blip. Skills England points to engineering as one of the occupations with the greatest additional employment demand between 2025 and 2030 in its assessment of priority skills to 2030.
The direction of travel is the same in the latest data. Digital, engineering and construction occupations appear most commonly among priority occupations, many already experiencing high recruitment demand and expected to keep growing strongly, the Skills England annual skills report 2026 found. For anyone writing a product hiring brief in the water sector, that means competing for people who are in demand across several growing fields at once.
Water utility software sits where product, data and engineering meet, so the brief now pulls in skills that used to live in separate teams. The hardest of those to find are the specialist ones. Technical and specialist sustainability skills top the list of roles employers struggle to recruit for, the IET reports, which is exactly the blend that modern water software work asks for.
Retention is the other half of the story. 79% of UK technical professionals plan to change employers in 2026, according to recruitment firm Rise Technical's 2025/26 Insights Report, which surveyed over 500 employers and 1000 candidates. So the people you want are open to moving, but so are the people you already have.
There's a shift at the junior end too. In engineering, entry-level hiring has fallen to -19% while senior hiring sits at -10%, a 9-percentage-point gap, a GOV.UK snapshot of entry-level hiring found. A thinner entry pipeline today means fewer home-grown specialists tomorrow, which raises the stakes on how you hire and develop people now.
Start by matching the brief to the reality of the market. Because the vast majority of new engineering hires come from the resident labour force, a GOV.UK review of professionals in IT and engineering notes, your plan should focus on the UK talent pool rather than assume you can recruit around a shortage from overseas. Pay fits that picture too: pay for engineering professionals on the Skilled Worker route is broadly in line with the UK average, the Migration Advisory Committee reports.
Then write a brief that sells the work, not just the requirements. With most technical professionals open to a move, the role that wins is the one with a clear problem to solve and a visible path to grow. Be specific about the water software product, the data behind it and the sustainability outcomes it supports.
When the brief spans product, data, engineering and sustainability, you need reach across the whole UK talent pool and speed to act when the right person appears. We search a database of 15 million candidates and manage recruitment end to end, so a broad brief does not mean a slow process. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost. If you're planning your next product hire in the water sector, tell Reed.ai the brief and we'll start the search.
