Your BESS hiring strategy is already behind. Not because your process is slow. Because the engineers you needed stopped being available before you knew you needed them. 

 
Approximately 12 GW of utility-scale storage was deployed in the US in 2024, one of the largest annual increases on record, with approximately 19 GW forecasted for 2025. Every one of those projects competed for the same finite pool of commissioning engineers. The developers that lost that competition are the ones now dealing with delayed CODs and revenue exposure they did not budget for. 
 

Where are the best skilled workers are coming from?

More than half of the 700+ energy firms, trade unions, and educators surveyed by the IEA reported critical hiring bottlenecks, a steady increase over previous years. That is not a projected risk. That is the current state of the market, from which your next hire is coming from. 
 

These shortages are most acute in applied technical roles, including electricians, engineers, and electrical power-line workers, who account for over half of the energy workforce. Your BESS project is not competing for engineers against other BESS projects. It is competing against grid upgrades, offshore wind, utilities, solar, and industrial electrification simultaneously. 
 

In nuclear and grid roles specifically, for every young worker entering the sector, there are 1.7 and 1.4 workers approaching retirement respectively, and between now and 2035, two out of every three new hires will be needed just to replace retiring energy workers. The pipeline of new engineers coming through does not cover what the market needs. 

Shape 

Is reactive hiring holding back your recruitment?

Most BESS developers still run recruitment the same way: the role becomes urgent, a brief gets written, and the search starts. In a normal market that takes eight to twelve weeks. In this market, the candidate you might have wanted has just accepted an offer in week three of someone else's process.

Candidates do not sit on job boards waiting; they move through referral networks and direct relationships. By the time a vacancy is formally approved internally, the shortlist for that role has already formed elsewhere. As LinkedIn data shows, 70% of the labour we need is passive and doesn't use job boards, which directly reflects the need to move before it becomes an urgent necessity.  
 

"I speak with these engineers every week, and the shift has been dramatic. They’re no longer applying for jobs or checking adverts, because they don’t need to. But they will pick up the phone. And it’s in that call where the real relationship building and hiring happens.”  Anthony Jackson, Principal Business Development Manager · VHR 

The developers, not losing time on this, started hiring before financial close. They map critical roles at the project development stage, build candidate relationships months before a start date is needed, and treat specialist recruiters as a standing resource rather than a last call. The hiring window exists. It just does not stay open until your internal approval process is finished.

 
What can the delay cost you?

Under standard EPC agreements for utility-scale battery projects, liquidated damages provisions apply when delivery timelines are missed, meaning a hiring gap that delays commissioning does not just cost revenue; it triggers contractual penalties on top. 
 

Your programme has a hiring problem you may not have priced in yet 

Larger developers can address the talent challenge by upskilling their existing workforce to support BESS deployment, but smaller developers must lock in capacity well in advance of deployment to ensure timely commissioning. Most developers are not taking that approach yet. The engineers you need are employed today. They are selective about what they move for and not looking at job boards. Getting in front of them requires an existing network and a conversation that starts before the role is live. 

 
If your 2026 and 2027 hiring plan still starts with posting a vacancy, the delays are already in your schedule. You just have not seen them yet. 

Shape 

How can VHR help?

VHR is a specialist technical recruitment agency with a dedicated renewables and energy practice. We place permanent and contract engineers, project managers, and technical specialists across offshore wind, grid infrastructure, BESS, and wider energy projects in the US and internationally.  

In practice, that means we maintain active candidate networks across HV transmission, offshore wind project delivery, BESS integration, and grid connection planning. These are the exact roles where time-to-hire is longest, and the passive candidate pool is hardest to access through conventional advertising.  
 
We also work extensively with transferable talent from oil and gas, subsea, heavy civil, and defense, identifying the candidates who have the base skills to convert quickly and supporting the business case for bringing them in.  

If you have roles that aren’t moving, a project coming up in the next 12 to 18 months, or a workforce plan that needs pressure-testing against what the market can supply, get in touch with our renewables team.  
 
The earlier that conversation happens, the more useful we can be.  
 

 

International Energy Agency (IEA) 

Workforce & Investment Research