Battery storage recruitment
We recruit across battery storage in sixteen markets, grid-scale and behind the meter: development and grid connection, electrical and HV engineering, construction and commissioning, asset management, and the commercial side that decides what the asset actually earns.
One decision shapes almost every storage hire, and plenty of businesses make it without noticing they have made it. Do you build the trading and optimisation capability yourself, or do you buy it in? Every market on this list has answered that differently, and the answer sets which roles are scarce, what they cost and who you are bidding against for them. It is worth being deliberate about before the first brief goes out.
Clients we have helped
The niches inside the niche
Battery storage is not one market
Developers, owners, optimisers, integrators and the consultancies advising all of them hire from separate pools. Whichever one you sit in, the hiring problem next door is not your hiring problem.
- Developers and owner operators
- You are competing for grid, planning and delivery people against solar and wind, and increasingly against data centres. The person who can move a site through the connections process is worth more to you than another developer.
- Optimisers and route to market
- The smallest and most expensive pool in the sector. A trader who genuinely understands storage rather than gas or power is a short list in any country, and everyone on it already knows what they are worth.
- EPC, integration and commissioning
- Where programmes actually slip. Commissioning sits in the gap between the developer, the integrator and the network operator, which is why it stays nobody’s job until the energisation date moves.
- Technology and OEM
- Controls, power conversion and SCADA engineering, plus the commercial people who sell into developers. It hires like a hardware business, which is why it loses candidates to sectors that pay on the same cycle.
- Consultancy and owner’s engineer
- The specialist grid and HV design engineers sit here rather than with the asset owners, which is why the same role appears in six cities at once when one firm needs another.
Before you brief anyone
Have you decided build or buy?
Storage is the one sector where the hardest hire depends on a decision the business has usually already made without calling it a decision. Do you run your own trading and optimisation, or do you contract route to market and manage the relationship?
The two answers need completely different people. One needs quantitative analysts, traders and the risk and treasury function around them. The other needs a commercial lead who can negotiate a toll or an offtake with an optimiser and hold them to it.
Both are legitimate and the market has not settled on either. What costs money is briefing for one while the business is actually doing the other, which happens more often than you would expect when the strategy changed and the job description did not.
Worth agreeing before anyone is approached: which model you are in, whether that is a permanent choice or a stage, and what you are asking this hire to build rather than run.
Choose your market
Sixteen markets, four different answers
Storage markets divide by what pays the asset: merchant spread, a capacity contract, reserves sold to a system operator, or a connection queue somebody else controls. That is what decides your hardest hire, rather than the gigawatts.
Europe
- UK The scarce hire depends on a decision you have already made.
- Germany Germany bought the trading rather than building it.
- Netherlands The people who decide your project work for the other side.
- Italy Build or buy depends on how far along you are, not what you believe.
- Spain Spain has just made storage a job in its own right.
- France The connection decision is commercial, and nobody has given it a name.
- Finland Finland is changing what its batteries are for, mid-build.
- Sweden Everybody is building a trading desk, and not all of them own batteries.
North America
- Texas The market is Texan. The desk usually is not.
- California The skill that decides whether a project earns has no name.
- Arizona No market, no desk, and the utilities are not hiring.
- Nevada Everything here waits on somebody else.
- New York Every gate in one job, because there is no one else to give them to.
Asia Pacific
Hiring somewhere that is not on this list? We work well beyond these sixteen markets. Tell us where and we will tell you honestly what we know and what we do not.
How a search runs
You see it as we see it
- Before we start
- The brief and the target companies are agreed in writing. You know which businesses we are approaching and which we are not, before anyone is contacted.
- Every week
- The outreach, the response levels, where each person sits in the process, and the reasons anyone said no. The money, the location, the counter-offer, the part of the role that put them off.
- When it stalls
- You hear it from us. A search that has gone quiet is a conversation about the brief, not a report we delay until you ask.
TalentPilot
We would rather you needed us less
Most agencies are built so that you call them again. The model only works while hiring stays hard for you, which means nobody selling it has much reason to make it easier.
We took the opposite bet, and not only out of principle. A business that hires well on its own stays a client for years and brings us the roles that are genuinely difficult. A business that depends on an agency resents every invoice and leaves the first time somebody undercuts us. The second kind of relationship is worth less and lasts less long.
So we built TalentPilot. Twenty-one tools across planning, attracting, hiring and keeping people: map the roles before they become urgent, see where the people actually are, write the advert properly, run a consistent interview, and know which of your new starters is at risk before they resign.
And one thing almost nobody has. Every week, the real reasons candidates said no. Not a summary. The actual objections: the money, the location, the counter-offer, the part of the role that put them off. Most businesses never find out, which is why they keep making the same hire the same way.
Everything on this page is one market on one date. Our clients see their own, continuously.
What is left for us is the work that genuinely needs a search. That is the part we are good at, and the part worth paying for.
See how TalentPilot worksWhat happens when you get in touch
A first call is a conversation about your hiring plan. Half an hour, with the consultant who runs this market for us.
We will tell you what we are seeing in your part of it: where the difficulty sits, which roles are moving and what people are actually being paid. You get that whether you decide to work with us or not.
If there is something we can help with, we will say what it would take and roughly how long. If there isn't, we will say so and point you at whoever is better placed.
No slide deck, no pitch, and nobody will chase you afterwards.
Questions
Clear answers for the next step.
What battery storage technologies do you recruit for?
We cover utility-scale lithium-ion BESS, long-duration energy storage (LDES) including flow batteries, and emerging storage technologies.
Can you find candidates with specific grid connection experience?
Yes. Grid connection managers and engineers with deep understanding of transmission and distribution networks are a core part of our candidate network.
Do you place energy traders and optimisers?
Absolutely. The commercial viability of BESS relies on algorithmic trading and market optimisation, and we place quantitative analysts and trading directors in these critical roles.
How do you support BESS hardware manufacturers?
We partner with OEMs to place battery management system (BMS) engineers, power electronics specialists, and manufacturing leaders.
Should we build a trading desk or contract the optimisation out?
It depends on what pays your asset, and the markets have split on it rather than converged. Germany largely bought the capability. Sweden is building it across three business models at once. Australia has not settled. Each market page sets out what the businesses around you have actually decided.
Does battery storage experience transfer between countries?
Construction, commissioning and engineering travel well. Grid connection and anything that turns on a market mechanism usually do not, because the rules are local and are sometimes published only in the local language. Plan to hire those domestically or grow them.
Do you work outside the sixteen markets listed here?
Yes. These are the ones we have written up and review monthly. Where we do not know a market properly we say so rather than guess.
How long does a storage search take?
Four to six weeks for a straightforward hire. Past seven weeks the brief is usually the problem rather than the market, and we would rather say so than keep sending CVs.