The engineer you hired five years ago probably isn’t the engineer you need today. Not because they’ve stopped learning, but because the job changed underneath them.
Manufacturers used to hire engineers to keep existing systems running. Now they’re hiring engineers who can integrate, improve, and intelligently operate systems that are more connected than ever.
That shift shows up everywhere in how manufacturers are searching for talent this year, and it’s worth understanding before your next requisition goes out.
The Job Description Changed. Did Your Hiring Process?
Automation and connected systems aren’t a side skill anymore. They’re the baseline, and it’s widening the engineering skills gap for companies still hiring the way they did five years ago.
“Companies are realizing they can’t just hire the same types of engineers they used to,” says Dave Chakmakjian, Senior Search Consultant at Capstone. “They need people who can work with robotics, AI, and automation software, not just electrical and mechanical systems.”
That’s a real shift in what “qualified” means. An engineer who’s excellent at traditional process work but has never touched industrial networking or automation platforms is a harder placement than they were three years ago, even if their core skills are strong.
Job postings that haven’t been rewritten to reflect this are quietly screening out the candidates who’d actually solve the problem, especially for automation engineer hiring, where connected-systems fluency is now table stakes.
Why “Electrical” and “Mechanical” Aren’t Separate Searches Anymore
The old model of hiring electrical engineers and mechanical engineers as two distinct tracks is breaking down. Manufacturers increasingly need people who move fluidly between both, plus the software and data layer that connects them.
That’s tightening an already narrow market. Electrical engineers in particular are in short supply.
“Electrical engineers are always in demand, outnumbered 3-to-1 by mechanicals.”
David Marquez, Partner and Practice Director at Capstone Search
When you’re dealing with an electrical engineer shortage that pronounced, speed and a clear value proposition matter more than they used to.
The Leadership and Succession Gap
Here’s the part that surprises a lot of hiring teams: it’s not just entry-level and mid-career roles that are hard to fill. Hiring for engineering leadership is a different story entirely, and not the story you’d expect.
“There are many roles for entry-level and mid-career engineers, but many engineering leaders are unemployed or underemployed,” says Art Ivanov, Capstone’s Practice Leader for Automation recruitment. “It seems like the management and executive level of roles is still not recovering.”
That disparity matters for succession planning. If your bench strength assumption is “we’ll promote from within when the time comes,” it’s worth checking whether your internal pipeline actually reflects the skills your next leadership hire will need, or whether the market has moved faster than your org chart has.
What This Means for Your Next Search
Three things are true at once right now: the skill bar has moved toward hybrid engineering skills, manufacturing electrical talent is tighter than mechanical, and leadership hiring isn’t behaving the way the rest of the market is.
None of that means hiring manufacturing engineers is impossible. It means the playbook that worked even a couple years ago needs an update, and your hiring strategy has to account for all three shifts at once, not just the one that’s easiest to solve for.
We’ll be publishing a full breakdown of what these shifts mean for compensation in our upcoming 2027 Engineering Salary Guide. In the meantime, if you’re staffing for where engineering is headed rather than where it’s been, that’s a conversation worth having with a manufacturing engineering recruitment partner who tracks these shifts daily.
Hiring for the engineer that manufacturing needs next, not the one it needed five years ago, takes a search partner who understands both the technical bar and the market pressure behind it. Talk to Capstone’s recruiting team to build a hiring strategy around where engineering is actually headed.
Insights provided by:
Dave Chakmakjian, Senior Search Consultant
David Marquez, Partner & Practice Director
Art Ivanov, Practice Leader, Automation
