Solar recruitment
We recruit across solar in ten markets: utility-scale and ground mount development, commercial and industrial rooftop, residential installation, and the asset management and operations that carry the thing for the next thirty years.
Solar carries an assumption the newer sectors do not, which is that after twenty years the skills must have settled by now. They have not. Domestic, commercial and ground mount have drifted far enough apart that people no longer move freely between them, and each step up the ladder is bought with a qualification rather than with time served. Understanding that ladder is worth more than any salary benchmark before you write a brief.
Clients we have helped
The niches inside the niche
Solar is not one market
Ground mount, commercial rooftop, domestic and the asset management layer above all three hire from separate pools. Whichever one you sit in, the hiring problem next door is not your hiring problem.
- Utility-scale ground mount
- You are competing for planning, grid and construction people against wind and storage, not against other solar developers. The scarce person understands the connection process rather than the panel.
- Commercial and industrial rooftop
- The smallest talent pool of the three and the one nobody writes a career plan around. Your people usually arrive from either the domestic side or from building services, and each arrives missing a different half of the job.
- Domestic install
- Your constraint is rarely electricians in the abstract. It is electricians who will work at height on a roof, hold the right certification, and stay once the busy season ends.
- Asset management and O&M
- Every time a portfolio changes hands somebody has to stand up a team to run it, usually inside weeks of completion. The people who have done that before are a small group and they are all already employed.
- Design and engineering consultancy
- The specialist design engineers sit in a handful of consultancies rather than with developers, which is why the same role appears in five cities at once when one of them needs another.
Before you brief anyone
Which solar market are you actually in?
Solar is three labour markets wearing one word, and they barely trade with each other. Utility-scale ground mount, commercial rooftop, and domestic install pay differently, hire differently and attract completely different people.
A developer and a domestic installer both say they are hiring in solar. One is competing for planning, grid and asset management people against wind and storage. The other is competing for electricians against every trade in the country.
The mistake that costs the most is briefing across the line. A utility developer who interviews domestic installers because the CV says solar, or an installer who benchmarks pay against utility-scale bands and concludes nobody will move for the money.
People do cross, but one step at a time. Domestic into commercial, commercial into ground mount, each step bought with new qualifications and time on site. Nobody moves from a domestic install team onto a grid-scale programme because the CV says solar.
Worth settling before anyone is approached: which of the three you are in, whether the role genuinely crosses between them, and what you are offering somebody who would have to cross.
Choose your market
The same panels, ten different jobs
What is scarce in Spain is abundant in Germany, and the market making the most noise is rarely the one that is hardest to hire in. Each of these is written from live vacancy evidence in that country and reviewed monthly.
Europe
North America
Asia Pacific
Hiring somewhere that is not on this list? We work well beyond these ten 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.
Do you focus on utility-scale or C&I solar?
We cover both utility-scale solar farms and commercial & industrial (C&I) rooftop portfolios, matching candidates to the specific project scale and commercial model.
What is the biggest challenge in solar hiring right now?
Grid connection expertise and development talent with a proven track record of bringing projects to ready-to-build (RTB) status are currently the tightest talent pools.
Can you support international solar portfolios?
Yes, our networks span the UK, Europe, USA, and APAC, allowing us to build teams for international developers and independent power producers.
How does TalentPilot work for a growing solar developer?
TalentPilot provides the executive search focus for your crucial Project Directors while giving you the platform and tools to directly hire project managers and engineers.
Do you recruit solar asset managers?
Yes, across the whole operational phase: asset managers, O&M leaders and performance analysts.
Do people move between domestic, commercial and ground mount?
Upwards, one step at a time, and each step is bought with a qualification rather than with time served. Domestic to commercial happens regularly. Domestic straight to ground mount almost never does. Briefs written as though those three are one pool are the common reason a solar search stalls.
Is solar still short of people?
In delivery and installation management, yes, consistently and across markets. The shortage moved rather than ended, and it is no longer where most of the commentary says it is.
How long does a solar search take?
Four to six weeks for a straightforward hire. Past seven weeks the brief is usually the problem rather than the market, and a package benchmarked against the wrong segment is the usual culprit.