CleanTech recruitment
We recruit for the businesses that make the physical things the transition runs on: electric vehicles and the motors inside them, drive systems for buses and rail, precision motion components, process and controls technology, and the test equipment that proves any of it performs.
Almost everything written about hiring in this sector is about innovation, and it points at the wrong roles. Across the work we have actually done here, the searches that run longest are not the clever engineering ones. They are the people who can make the thing at volume, and the people who can sell something technical to an engineer who knows it better than they do. A cleantech business usually stalls on one of those two, and neither is a shortage of people who care about climate.
Clients we have helped
The niches inside the niche
Cleantech is not one market
An electric motorcycle maker, a drive systems manufacturer and a testing equipment business have little in common technically, and hire in strikingly similar shapes: a few people who can take a product into volume, and fewer still who can sell it to engineers. What changes between them is everything around those two, and it changes enough that a brief which works in one of these is usually wrong in the next.
- Electric vehicle manufacturers
- You are building a factory and a commercial team at the same time, on different clocks. Selling direct rather than through dealers also puts roles on your payroll that a traditional manufacturer never carries, from handover to customer support, and those have no obvious pool to hire from.
- Motors, drivetrain and drive systems
- Build-to-print and series manufacturing, where the scarce person is the mechanical engineer who has taken something from prototype into volume. Below them, machinists and fitters are competing against aerospace and automotive rates in the same travel-to-work area, which is where most of these searches are actually won or lost.
- Vehicle conversion and retrofit
- Small, deeply technical teams selling something bespoke, often to individuals rather than fleets. The commercial hire is unusual because it is neither a volume sales job nor a procurement-led one, and the people who are good at it rarely come from the motor trade.
- Precision motion and components
- Your product goes inside somebody else’s product, so quality and compliance carry more weight here than anywhere else in cleantech. A failure is their failure first and yours second, which is why the quality function is a leadership hire rather than an administrative one.
- Test, measurement and capital equipment
- The sale is long, technical and made to engineers, which makes the salesperson closer to an applications engineer than to a salesperson. That pool is genuinely small and is mostly employed, so these are search roles rather than advertising roles.
- Process, controls and industrial technology
- The product is a system rather than a box, so the hire has to cover electrical design, controls and the customer site. Job titles vary wildly between businesses here, which means advertising against a title finds far fewer people than the market actually holds.
Before you brief anyone
The job is usually one step away from the technology
A cleantech business describes itself by its technology, because the technology is why it exists. Then it writes the job advert the same way, and the advert attracts people who want to work on the technology rather than people who can get it out of the door.
The roles that decide whether the business scales sit just beside it. The engineer who takes a working prototype to something that can be built a thousand times to the same tolerance. The fitter who builds it to that standard on a wet Tuesday in February. The salesperson who can be questioned by an engineer and still be believed.
The second thing worth settling first is whether you will hire from inside cleantech or outside it. Most of the capability you need already exists in automotive, aerospace and general manufacturing, which pay competitively and carry far less risk. Somebody crossing over is accepting more uncertainty, and what actually persuades them is the product and the scope of the job rather than the mission.
One warning from repeated experience. A founder who is still doing the commercial job themselves will brief for the version of it they have already outgrown, and hire too junior. It is the single most expensive hiring mistake we see in this sector, and it is made twice: once in sales and once in manufacturing.
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 kind of cleantech businesses do you work with?
Businesses that make something physical: electric vehicles and the motors inside them, drive systems for buses and rail, precision motion components, process and controls technology, and the test equipment that proves any of it performs. Hardware, in other words, rather than platforms.
Which roles are hardest to fill here?
Two, and neither is the one businesses expect. Engineers who have taken a product from a working prototype to something that can be built a thousand times to the same standard. And technical salespeople who can hold a real conversation with an engineer who knows the product better than they do. Both pools are small and neither is confined to cleantech.
Do you hire for early-stage businesses?
Yes, and the honest warning is that a first commercial hire and a first manufacturing hire are the two that most often go wrong. Both are usually made too junior, because the founder is still doing the job themselves and briefs for the version of it they have outgrown.
Do we have to hire from inside cleantech?
Usually not, and insisting on it is a common way to make a search impossible. Most of the capability these businesses need already exists in automotive, aerospace and general manufacturing. What matters is whether the person can work without the process and tooling those industries gave them.
Can you hire outside the UK?
Yes. A product business hires where the plant is and where the customers are, which is rarely the same country. We have run country leadership and market-entry searches in Europe and the United States for UK manufacturers selling abroad.