Battery storage recruitment · United Kingdom
Battery storage (BESS) recruitment agency for the UK
Net Zero Evolution is a battery storage recruitment agency for the UK. We recruit grid connection, commissioning, construction, asset management and commercial people for BESS developers, owners and integrators. This is a market where the story has genuinely turned. For three years the constraint was land and planning. It is now grid capacity, deliberately rationed against more consented projects than the country needs.
That changes who is scarce. The value moves to the people who can actually get an asset energised.
Clients we have helped
Battery storage is not one market
The battery storage markets we recruit for in the UK
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.
How we work here
How we recruit for battery storage in the UK
Recruitment fundamentals travel. Markets do not. The UK puts a band on the face of an advert far more often than anywhere else we work, in storage as much as in solar and charging. We have been hiring into UK storage for years, from SCADA and controls engineering and commissioning through development and grid into commercial and trading leadership.
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.
Why hiring here is different from anywhere else
Why battery storage hiring in the UK is different
The value has moved to whoever can get an asset energised.
Where the pressure is right now
The hardest battery storage roles to fill in the UK right now
Specialist grid and HV design engineering. One global consultancy is advertising the same senior and principal battery storage engineer role in three UK cities at once, and other consultancies, developers and manufacturers are advertising senior storage electrical engineers in London. When consultancies hedge the same discipline across the whole country, the shortage is in the discipline, not in any one firm.
Commissioning and energisation. It sits between the developer, the integrator and the network operator, so it stays unowned until it is late. Commissioning engineers and battery field technicians are being advertised by integrators and power electronics suppliers this month. Hire for it early or explain it later.
Delivery and project management across the build out. Battery storage project and delivery managers are being advertised by manufacturers, integrators and developers at the same time.
Based on live vacancy activity across the UK storage market. Reviewed 27 October 2026, updated monthly.
Delivery
Work we have done in UK storage
Two recent UK storage engagements.
- A commercial lead, then the team underneath
- A power conversion and battery storage technology business needed a commercial leader to own storage across the region. We placed that person, and then the bid engineer who joined their team shortly afterwards. Storage sales at this end of the market is a tendering job as much as a selling one, so the second hire is what let the first one do the job properly.
- A 200MW battery storage programme
- An energy services business building a 200 megawatt battery storage programme needed engineering faster than it could reach it locally. We ran the searches across SCADA and controls for the storage sites, protection and controls, principal electrical and civil engineering, LV design, and the quantity surveying and document control a programme that size runs on. Engineers across several disciplines, and a programme that is pushing on nicely.
Market Intelligence
The market right now
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16 April 2026
More storage in the queue than the country needsAfter connections reform the government and regulator put the battery pipeline 14.8GW above the upper end of the 2030 range and 61.7GW above the 2035 system need, and said plainly that the pipeline exceeds policy expectations.
Source: Open letter from DESNZ and Ofgem on connections reform delivery .
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17 September 2026
Now the regulator wants a fee to stay in itIn September 2026 Ofgem said it was minded to approve a commitment fee on technologies that overshoot their target by more than half, starting at £3,000 per MW and rising to £25,000. Batteries are the technology it was written for. A final decision is expected later in 2026.
Source: Ofgem moves to free grid capacity .
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2 April 2026
Revenue can move fastBattery revenue in Great Britain rose 69% in March 2026 to £70,000 per MW per year, with the Balancing Mechanism contributing a record £46,000 per MW.
Source: GB battery revenues, March 2026 .
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11 March 2026
Capacity payments competed down hardThe T-4 auction for 2029/30 delivery cleared at £27.10 per kW per year, the lowest T-4 clearing price since 2022, with batteries winning 1.22GW de-rated.
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13 December 2024
The target is not the constraintThe Clean Power 2030 Action Plan sets a range of 23 to 27GW of battery storage by 2030.
Source: Clean Power 2030 Action Plan, Table 1 .
Market intelligence reviewed 8 October 2026.
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 worksHow 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.
What 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.
If you work in this market
What we are seeing from the other side
The same searches, read from the candidate side.
- Grid and HV design engineers
- The scarcest discipline in UK storage. If consultancies are advertising your role in several cities at once, you have more leverage than your current employer has told you.
- Commissioning engineers and managers
- Chronically under-resourced and increasingly visible, because energisation is now the thing standing between a consented project and revenue. Ask what the commissioning team actually looks like before you join one.
- Where it leads
- Commissioning into operations leadership, grid into development directorship, and delivery into programme management across a portfolio. The sector is young enough that the route up is shorter than in conventional power.
Questions
Clear answers for the next step.
Which recruitment agency specialises in battery storage hiring in the UK?
Net Zero Evolution. We recruit only in the decarbonisation of transport and energy, and battery storage is one of our core sectors: grid connection, commissioning, construction, asset management, optimisation and commercial roles. We work on a fixed fee of 8 to 12%, agreed before we start.
What battery storage roles do you recruit for in the UK?
Development and grid connections, HV and electrical design, SCADA and controls, EPC and construction management, commissioning and energisation, O&M and asset management, and the commercial side up to trading and route to market leadership.
Is the UK still short of battery storage sites?
Connections reform has left 14.8GW more battery storage in the queue than the upper end of the 2030 range, and Ofgem is now proposing a per-MW fee to push surplus projects out.
Why is commissioning so hard to resource?
Because it sits between the developer, the integrator and the network operator, so it belongs to nobody until the energisation date slips. It is the role most often added late and the one most likely to be the reason a programme is late.