It’s been a busy 12 months in the agritech world as the sector continues to grow as an interesting, exciting and rapidly expanding space.
Recruitment wise, that means it’s also become increasingly competitive. The need to transform food production across the globe in a way that is better for the environment, and in line with net zero targets, has led to new developments, new investment and funding streams – and not surprisingly, an explosion of new jobs.
With a rising number of opportunities in areas such as AI, precision farming, smart irrigation, vertical farming and reducing chemical usage, there’s plenty on offer as an exciting new career path.
As recruitment experts with more than 45 years of experience, we’ve seen a variety of sectors emerge and evolve over the years and alongside renewable energy recruitment, agritech is undeniably a sector where that change is happening at pace.
As a business, we’ve significantly grown our agritech recruitment services throughout 2023, including opening an additional office within the Agri-EPI Centre in Telford to bring us closer to the agritech community which is in demand of new staff.
As we approach our first year anniversary in the centre, we’ll be looking to further build on the excellent foundations we’ve already laid in matching growing agritech businesses with the skilled workers they need to achieve their goals.
In demand roles in the Agritech Sector
Some of the key agritech roles that are growing in demand include:
Data scientist and STEM biased roles
This particularly relates to roles involving an analysis of large volumes of data to provide feedback and insight to farmers and the wider industry. It includes jobs such as embedded software engineers, functional safety specialists, web-based developers, Java EE developers and Python coders.
Design engineers
These are the people who turn all the innovative ideas into reality. They plan and evaluate new projects and consult with appropriate parties to determine the design requirements.
Industrial, manufacturing and process engineers
Engineers with these specialisms continue to be in demand to take products from the concept stage to manufacture and production. They are required to apply their specialist knowledge and skills to specify, predict and evaluate results from the implemented processes and systems.
Software, Artificial Intelligence and robotics
With a surge in manufacturing output and revolutionary developments in the agritech industry, automated solutions can be the key to maintaining a competitive advantage. As a result, this is an incredibly popular recruitment area.
Sales and marketing managers
As innovations are developed and new technologies rolled out at scale, sales and marketing managers are needed to assess demand for company products or services, as well as industry competition and prices. They identify new customers and develop strategies for increasing sales or market share.
Finding the right people for the job
The challenge as always in a period of rapid and sweeping transformation, is finding skilled staff in the numbers needed.
Whether you’re a start-up trying to launch a new innovation, or a larger more established business which is growing and improving by embracing agritech, recruiting skilled candidates in this sector can be tricky. It often requires an open mind, the willingness to explore those with the desired skills from other sectors and the foresight to capitalise on a genuine shift in what motivates a candidate.
Role fulfilment, life balance and eco-awareness have really jumped up the priority list for a lot of candidates, and this is something that many agritech roles can offer, it’s just a case of knowing how to promote the benefits effectively. Our previous article on changing perceptions of agritech careers explores this particular topic further.
As well as promoting roles effectively, and to the right audience, successful recruitment in a candidates’ market relies on knowing where to look for people with transferrable skills.
Thanks to our 45 years in industry, we have a vast amount of experience – and contacts – to draw upon. For example, we tend to find strong pools of candidates for agritech roles in areas such as energy, healthcare, vehicle and component manufacture, banking, IT and finance.
You can read many more tips for a successful agritech recruitment strategy here, as well as this specific example of how we matched one start-up business with a desperately needed design engineer.
Working with Jonathan Lee as your specialist recruitment partner
We take the time to understand your project’s current and future needs and provide insights that will help you achieve your business growth goals.
Using our vast experience and huge network of contacts, we’ll help you find the people you need to turn your vision into reality.
To find out more about how we can support you, contact our agritech recruitment specialist Matt Johnson on 01952 987033, or email matt.johnson@jonlee.co.uk.
