Where have all the good engineers gone? The missing middle and how to fix it

If you’ve tried to hire hands-on engineers since the pandemic, you’ve felt it. We’ve got a missing middle. The senior end has thinned as experienced people retired or moved up into ops leadership. The junior end has grown as apprenticeships rebound. In between, the pool of mid-career engineers who can both do and lead is shallower than I’ve ever seen.

Here’s what created the gap and what works to close it inside an SME.

How we lost the middle

• Historic under-investment in training. A generation of companies deprioritised apprenticeships. The pipeline shrank, then demand bounced back. The pipeline picture backs this up. Engineering UK’s latest apprenticeships inquiry shows engineering-related starts are still below mid-2010s levels, with uneven uptake across disciplines

• Pandemic acceleration. Furlough gave many late-career engineers a glimpse of life outside shift work. Quite a few decided not to return. The result was a step change in availability. Official data confirms the shift. Government analysis of over-50s’ labour-market participation shows a marked rise in economic inactivity post-pandemic, with many citing health, caring and work-life factors for leaving the workforce
• Fast-tracking the capable. The best technical people with decent people skills were promoted quickly into ops management. Great for leadership benches. Bad for day-to-day technical depth.
• Salary inflation and salary confusion. With fewer safe pairs of hands, SMEs bid up pay for candidates who sometimes lacked the scars that come from ten years of solving hard problems at the line.

However, none of this is a reason to give up. It means you need a clear plan for how you attract, develop and retain the engineers you do hire.

A hiring strategy that lands talent

When I’m briefed on a “unicorn” engineer, I push back and break the requirement into parts. The goal is a plan you can execute this quarter, not a wish list that sits on the ATS.

1. Decide the non-negotiables.
    What must this person deliver in the first 90 days? Uptime on Line 3. Scrap in Cell A. PPAP for a new customer. Anchor the role to outcomes, not a catalogue of skills.
2. Broaden the funnel with structured compromise.
   • If you can’t find the unicorn, split it. Hire a strong maintainer now and a graduate with potential into CI.
   • Consider adjacent backgrounds. Food, pharmaceutical, assembly and machining share more than people think.
3. Assess with real work.
    Give a candidate a condenser unit fault tree or a simple FMEA on a known pain point. Sit them with the team for an hour. You’ll learn more than any interview.
4. Sell what matters.
    People move for leadership, learning and fair flexibility. If your supervisors support their team, if progression is real and if a late start for school drop-off is possible, say so clearly in the job ad and the first call. We help clients shape and communicate that proposition as part of our permanent service and we can also plug gaps quickly with interims where needed.
5. Move decisively.
    Good engineers are not on the market for long. Shortlist fast, meet quickly, make an offer that respects their value and backs it with a clean onboarding plan.

Grow your own without slowing the plant

Hiring solves today. Development protects tomorrow. The trick is doing both without dropping output.

• Structured buddying. Pair each junior with a high-performing tech for specific assets or cells. Make it time-boxed and measurable.
• Targeted multi-skilling. Build a simple matrix. Pay for progress. Start with skills that de-risk your biggest bottlenecks.
• Real projects, small scope. Give early-career engineers contained problems with a visible owner. Think setup reduction on one press, not a plant-wide SMED programme.
• Leadership basics for supervisors. Many first-line leaders were promoted on competence, not coaching. A short, focused programme on feedback, prioritisation and daily review can change the tone on the floor within weeks.

Where it helps to move fast or bring in niche expertise, interim specialists can stabilise lines, mentor juniors and leave behind better routines. Our contract bench is built for exactly this kind of outcomes-based deployment.

Pay and flexibility

You don’t have to out-pay every competitor. You do need to be fair and consistent.

• Benchmark locally and by shift pattern.
• Offer meaningful flexibility where the job allows. Rotas that respect life admin keep people.
• Reward skills gained, not just time served. Link pay steps to your skills matrix.

What good looks like in practice

In a 120-headcount precision engineering client, we split a unicorn brief into two hires: a maintenance engineer who could handle PLC-assisted diagnostics and a graduate into process improvement. We added a 12-week buddying plan and a simple leader standard work for supervisors. Within three months:

• Unplanned downtime fell on the bottleneck cell
• New customer PPAP passed first time
• We had a clear internal successor for the senior maintainer

That is how you rebuild the middle, with one sensible hire and one simple development loop at a time.

If you want a partner who actually does this

We’re a challenger brand with experienced consultants who live in these markets. We place middle and senior leadership and the technical talent that makes factories run. Explore our manufacturing and engineering expertise, and learn about us, our backing and why clients come back. If you need speed or short-term impact, our contract service is there to deliver specialists who add value from day one.

Need to find the right engineers or leaders and keep them?
Let’s map the gaps, prioritise one or two pivotal hires and build the development loop that closes the rest.