Cleantech — 13 November 2026 — 12 min read

Hiring in 2027: What It Looks Like in Solar, BESS, EV and Engineering

By Scott Savory

What hiring looks like in 2027 across solar, BESS, EV charging and engineering. The data, the skills gaps, the new six-month rule and how to win talent.

2027 is going to be a strange year to hire in.

The wider UK jobs market is cooling. Vacancies are at their lowest outside the pandemic since 2014. On paper, there are more candidates than roles.

In solar, battery storage, EV charging and engineering, it's the opposite. Projects are stacking up, 2030 targets are getting closer, and the people who can actually deliver them are already in jobs.

Add the biggest change to UK employment law in a generation, landing on 1 January 2027, and you get a year where hiring well matters as much as hiring fast.

Here's what we expect, sector by sector, and what to do about it.

Key takeaways

The clean energy workforce needs to nearly double. Government analysis puts it at around 440,000 in 2023 and over 860,000 by 2030.
Solar has to double in four years. Installed capacity sits at around 22 GW. The 2030 target is 45 to 47 GW.
Battery storage just had its best quarter ever. The GB fleet hit 8.5 GW in Q3 2026 and is forecast to reach 17.7 GW by the end of 2029.
EV charging is moving to ultra-rapid hubs. Growth is slowing overall, but demand is shifting to bigger sites, public sector contracts and commercial roles.
A bad hire gets expensive from 1 January 2027. The ordinary unfair-dismissal qualifying period falls to six months, not two years, and the compensation cap goes.
Precision beats volume. Clear briefs, a fast process and proper onboarding will matter more than ever.

The 2027 paradox: a softer market, a tighter talent pool

Look at the headline numbers and you'd think hiring in 2027 will be easy.

UK vacancies fell to 691,000, the lowest outside the pandemic since 2014 — Source: ONS Vacancy Survey, as cited in the supplied article and October 2026 labour-market reporting. Three-month averages; periods are not equally spaced. View full size.

Vacancies are down 5.1% on the year, and Adzuna counted 2.33 jobseekers for every vacancy in September, the most competitive market for candidates in over two years. The ONS says smaller firms are holding back because labour costs have gone up.

But that's the whole market. Grid engineers, BESS commissioning leads and EV site delivery managers are not sitting on job boards waiting for a call. In one renewable workforce survey, 46% of respondents named grid and electrical as the tightest area for hiring.

So 2027 runs two markets side by side. Plenty of applicants for generalist roles. A real fight for the specialists who build and connect energy assets. Plan for the second one.

Clean energy jobs: 400,000 more by 2030

The government's Clean Energy Jobs Plan, published in October 2025, sets the scale of the challenge.

The UK clean energy workforce needs to nearly double by 2030 — Source: DESNZ Clean Energy Jobs Plan, October 2025. Approximate 2023 baseline and 2030 estimate, including supply chains; not a forecast of 2027 vacancies. View full size.

That works out at an average rise of close to 10% a year. Solar alone needs to grow from around 20,000 jobs to 35,000. Offshore wind needs 100,000 workers.

The plan names 31 priority occupations, from electricians, plumbers and welders to electrical engineers and project managers. Pay is already a pull. Ministers say entry-level roles in most clean energy occupations pay around 23% more than comparable jobs elsewhere.

What this means for 2027: 2027 sits right in the middle of that climb. Businesses across the sector are drawing from the same pool, at the same time, against the same deadline. Wait until a project is funded to start hiring and you'll be late.

Solar in 2027: the build-out gets real

Solar has to double in four years to hit its 2030 target — Sources: Solar Roadmap; DESNZ data reported by pv magazine; Modo Energy. The dashed bar is a forecast, not installed capacity. View full size.

UK solar passed 22 GW and 2 million installations in 2026. March 2026 saw 27,607 installs, the most in a single month since 2012. The February 2026 CfD auction secured a record 4.9 GW of solar across 157 projects.

Here's the catch. Modo Energy's analysis has the fleet reaching roughly 41 GW by 2030, short of target, with grid connection timelines as the binding constraint. The government's own Solar Roadmap says hitting target depends on grid reform landing on time and on more skilled labour.

That's where 2027 comes in. A big share of those CfD projects move towards construction, and grid offers under NESO's Gate 2 reform are being issued through to early 2027, unlocking projects that have been stuck in the queue.

Solar roles we expect to be hardest to fill in 2027:

Grid connection engineers and managers
LV and HV electrical design engineers
Construction and site managers for utility-scale builds
Commissioning engineers
Qualified solar electricians and installers for the rooftop boom
Planning and development managers with a track record of consents

Our solar recruitment work

Battery storage (BESS) in 2027: record build, real bottlenecks

Battery storage hit a record 8.5 GW, with 17.7 GW forecast by 2029 — Sources: Modo Energy GB BESS buildout reports and October 2026 forecast. Operational grid-scale rated power in Great Britain, not energy capacity. The dashed bar is a forecast. View full size.

Nine batteries came online in Q3 2026, adding 917 MW and beating the previous quarterly record. The pipeline behind them is huge. By autumn 2025 the UK had over 76 GW of grid-scale BESS with planning approval.

Not all of it will get built. Connections reform cut a large volume of storage from the grid queue, and forecasts have moved with every round of delays. But the projects that survived are the ready ones, with land, planning and finance in place. 2027 is when many of them move into construction.

What this means for hiring: BESS is shifting from a developer's market to a builder's and operator's market. Demand moves away from origination and planning and towards delivery, commissioning and asset management.

BESS roles we expect to be hardest to fill in 2027:

BESS controls and SCADA engineers
HV and battery commissioning engineers
EPC project managers and site managers
Grid connection and compliance engineers
Asset managers and performance analysts
Trading and optimisation analysts as more capacity runs merchant

Our battery storage recruitment work

EV charging in 2027: fewer, bigger, faster

EV sales targets jump from 38% in 2027 to 52% in 2028 — Sources: ZEV mandate annual car-sales targets; SMMT outlooks cited in the supplied article. Targets are policy requirements, not sales forecasts. The chart distinguishes the SMMT forecasts and notes the government review. View full size.

The ZEV mandate sets the pace for everything downstream, charging included. The target steps up to 38% in 2027, then jumps to 52% in 2028. The SMMT expects actual EV sales to fall short of the mandate, which is under review. Reports in October suggested the 2030 target could be eased from 80% to 60%. Either way, the direction is set: more EVs every year and more charging needed.

On infrastructure, the UK passed 122,700 public chargers by the end of July 2026. Overall growth is cooling to around 10% a year, but the shape is changing. Investment is flowing to ultra-rapid, en-route hubs. The number of charging hubs passed 1,000 in 2026, up by about a quarter in a year. Local authority LEVI contracts are driving the on-street side.

What this means for hiring: fewer volume installer roles, more demand for people who can win, design and deliver big sites and public sector contracts.

EV roles we expect to be hardest to fill in 2027:

Business development managers selling into local authorities and fleets
Site acquisition and property managers
Grid connection and electrical design engineers
Project managers for multi-site hub delivery
Field service and maintenance engineers, as uptime becomes the battleground

Our EV charging recruitment work

Engineering and advanced manufacturing: the shortage underneath everything

Clean energy doesn't build itself. Behind every solar farm, battery site and charging hub is a supply chain of electrical, mechanical, controls and manufacturing engineers. That pool is tight, and it's shared with every other sector that needs engineers.

The numbers are stark:

170,000+ a year. EngineeringUK estimates the profession needs well over 170,000 new engineers and technicians every year to 2030 just to stand still.
An ageing workforce. Close to a third of the manufacturing workforce is over 50.
Three in four struggling to recruit. The Royal Academy of Engineering told the Migration Advisory Committee that around three-quarters of businesses now struggle to recruit engineering and technology skills, up from half in 2021. Sustainability and decarbonisation skills were among the scarcest.
A £5bn problem. Enginuity's Mind the Gap 2026 research puts the cost of skills gaps across engineering and manufacturing at over £5bn.

What this means for 2027: expect the fiercest competition for HV and LV electrical engineers, controls and automation engineers, commissioning engineers and project managers. The good news is these skills travel. A controls engineer from food manufacturing can become a strong BESS controls engineer. An electrical project manager from data centres can run a solar build.

Hire for transferable skills and train the sector knowledge. You'll reach a much bigger pool than a brief that insists on "must have five years in BESS".

Geography matters too. The Clean Energy Jobs Plan points to the biggest regional demand in Scotland, the East of England and the North West. The Midlands and the North East sit at the heart of the manufacturing supply chain. If your sites are there, you're competing with everyone else building there.

The Employment Rights Act: the six-month rule changes the maths

This is the change many hiring plans haven't priced in yet.

From 1 January 2027, the qualifying period for ordinary unfair dismissal drops from two years to six months. The cap on the compensatory award goes at the same time. And it hits your existing team on day one: anyone with six months' service on 1 January is covered straight away.

From 2027, the probation call has to be made before month six — Suggested review points from Penningtons Manches Cooper. This is a management checklist, not a statutory timeline or legal advice. View full size.

What it means in practice:

The decision window is shorter. Review performance early and follow a fair process. Some protections, including against discrimination and automatically unfair dismissal, already apply without six months' service.
Long probation periods need a rethink. A six-month probation that ends with a decision on the last day can be too late. Notice and statutory service rules matter, so get advice before deciding when a dismissal takes effect.
Exposure is uncapped. Removing the compensatory cap increases the financial risk of a badly handled exit.
The hire itself carries more weight. Employment lawyers are already advising businesses to tighten recruitment and focus on retention.

In a sector where a senior grid or BESS hire can take months to find, the cost of getting it wrong just went up. The brief, the assessment and the onboarding are now risk decisions, not admin.

General information, not legal advice. Acas sets out the January 2027 changes. Speak to an employment lawyer about your own contracts, notice periods and decisions.

Five shifts in how hiring will work in 2027

From what we're seeing across clients and candidates, this is how hiring changes next year.

Skills over sector badges. There aren't enough people with five years in BESS to go round. Hire for transferable skills like controls, HV and project delivery, then train the sector knowledge.
Speed wins. Skilled candidates are fielding several approaches at once. A five-stage process over six weeks loses them. Two or three stages, feedback within 48 hours, offers within days.
Retention becomes a hiring metric. Under the six-month rule, a hire who fails at month seven is a cost and a risk. Track it, and work with partners who stand behind their placements.
Project peaks drive contract demand. Grid timelines make project phases stop and start. Expect more interim and contract hires for commissioning, construction and grid work, with permanent hires for the core team.
AI screens, people close. AI tools will handle more sourcing and screening. The part that decides the hire, selling the role to someone who isn't looking, stays human.

Precision beats volume: five steps to hire well in 2027 — Source: Envo Talent's supplied hiring playbook. Practical guidance, not statistical data. View full size.

Precision beats volume. Get these five steps right and you'll be better placed to fill roles and keep the people you hire.

Quick answers

What will hiring look like in 2027 in renewable energy?

Tight for skilled roles, looser for generalist ones. Expect strong competition for grid, electrical, controls and project delivery talent, longer searches for senior hires and pressure to move fast on offers.

Which clean energy roles will be hardest to fill in 2027?

Grid connection engineers, HV electrical engineers, BESS controls and commissioning engineers, solar electricians and installers, and experienced project managers. The government's plan names 31 priority occupations, from electricians and welders to electrical engineers and project managers.

How does the Employment Rights Act change hiring in 2027?

From 1 January 2027, the ordinary unfair-dismissal qualifying period falls to six months and the compensatory cap is removed. Review performance early and take advice on probation, notice and dismissal decisions. Some protections already apply from day one.

Is 2027 a good time to hire in cleantech?

Yes, if you're ready. The softer wider market means some strong people are more open to a move than they were a year ago. That window rewards a clear brief and a fast process.

Hiring in 2027? Let's lock in your plan

The best time to plan 2027 hiring is now, before Q1 budgets release and every competitor starts chasing the same people.

Envo Talent helps teams in solar, BESS, EV charging, engineering and advanced manufacturing hire the people who build, connect and run energy assets. Permanent, contract and interim.

What you get:

A 2027 hiring plan built around your project pipeline
Salary benchmarks for the roles you need
A shortlist of qualified candidates, including people who aren't on job boards
A discussion of the support and replacement terms that apply to your search

Tell us the roles you need to fill and we'll come back with how we'd fill them.

Get your 2027 hiring plan or call 01908 048 988.

Sources

Figures and charts follow the supplied article dated 13 November 2026. Forecasts, targets and Envo's hiring expectations are not observed outcomes or guarantees. Geographic coverage differs: UK solar and jobs, Great Britain grid-scale BESS.