Decision guide · Engineering & manufacturing
What it costs to hire in engineering by salary band, what an advert really draws, how long a search takes — and which of the three routes suits your role. Every figure comes from adverts we placed and the 3 engineering & manufacturing roles we filled.
Recruiting in engineering through us costs a flat £2,000–£3,000 +VAT at the salaries we have filled engineering & manufacturing roles at (£35,000–£45,000), against £7,000–£9,000 at a 20% agency fee, with no commission. Our 3 filled engineering & manufacturing roles took a median of 60 days from brief to hire, against 42 days across all 46 roles we have filled. Advertising it yourself starts at £399 +VAT: across 71 engineering & manufacturing adverts we placed, the median drew 15 applications in 28 days (31 across all sectors) and 21% drew fewer than five.
| Option | What you pay at £39,000, the middle of the engineering & manufacturing roles we have filled | What you get | Best when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Advertise it yourself | £399–£599 +VAT per advert | Your advert across the major job boards for 28 days; you screen, interview and chase. Engineering & manufacturing adverts drew a median of 15 applications. | You have an engineering manager with the hours to read every application, test technical claims at a first call and chase people who have not answered. The role has a common title in your area, and the salary sits at or above what local adverts are paying. |
| Premium Hire | £2,000 +VAT (£30,000 – £44,999) | A recruiter advertises, headhunts and screens, and presents a shortlist. Our engineering & manufacturing median: 60 days. | The title covers very different jobs from one company to the next, the people you want are working and not reading adverts, or nobody in-house has the time to screen technical CVs properly. A fixed fee also suits a senior role, because the saving against a percentage grows with the salary. |
| Percentage agency | about £7,800 at a 20% fee | An agency searches and you pay a share of the first-year salary when someone starts. | You would rather pay nothing unless somebody starts, and the percentage is affordable at this salary. |
Fees exclude VAT. The 20% figure is the illustration used across this site, not a quote from any named agency; percentage agencies set their own rates.
| Advertised salary | Adverts | Median applications | Drew fewer than five |
|---|---|---|---|
| £25,000–£29,999 | 6 | Under the reporting floor (fewer than 8 adverts) | |
| £30,000–£34,999 | 9 | 45 | 22% |
| £35,000–£39,999 | 18 | 5.5 | 44% |
| £40,000–£49,999 | 24 | 8.5 | 21% |
| £50,000–£59,999 | 8 | 20.5 | 0% |
| £60,000 and above | 3 | Under the reporting floor (fewer than 8 adverts) | |
| Hidden or not stated | 3 | Under the reporting floor (fewer than 8 adverts) | |
| All engineering & manufacturing adverts | 71 | 15 | 21% |
| All sectors | 1,141 | 31 | 14% |
Source: TalentFinder UK Job Advert Response Benchmark, Q4 2026, talentfinderuk.co.uk/data/job-advert-response-benchmark — applications per 28-day advert placed through our own advertising account, 2025-10-03 to 2026-09-05. A band with fewer than 8 adverts publishes no figure. Time to first application is not measured.
| Filled roles | Median days | Middle half | Fastest | Slowest | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Engineering & manufacturing | 3 | 60 | 58–87.5 | 56 | 115 |
| All sectors | 46 | 42 | 29.3–68.8 | 14 | 169 |
Source: TalentFinder UK Time to Fill by Sector, Q3 2026, talentfinderuk.co.uk/data/time-to-fill-uk-by-sector — days from the role opening to it closing as filled, across roles we filled and publish individually. It measures roles that were filled, so it is not a fill rate.
| Role we filled | Salary (middle of the range) | Our fixed fee | At a 20% fee | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Electrician | £40,000 | £2,000 +VAT | £8,000 | £6,000 |
| Field Service Engineer — meat processing equipment | £38,500 | £2,000 +VAT | £7,700 | £5,700 |
| CNC Programmer / Setter | £39,000 | £2,000 +VAT | £7,800 | £5,800 |
Salary is the middle of the range written on the vacancy; the fee follows the salary agreed.
A field-based electrician covering client sites across London for a business whose work is reducing energy intensity for large organisations. Qualified electricians are not scarce; qualified electricians who will work across a spread of client sites, unsupervised, and represent someone else’s brand on arrival are a much smaller group.
Field service on meat processing equipment is a narrow discipline: production-line machinery, food-industry hygiene standards, unsociable call-outs and a customer whose line cannot stop. The pool of people who have done exactly this is small enough to count.
Programming and setting CNC machines is a skill that takes years and does not transfer neatly between shops — different controls, different tolerances, different materials. The client was open to relocation, which widened the map without widening the skill requirement.
Engineering titles travel badly. The same job title covers a draughtsman in one company and a chartered lead in another, so a shortlist built on titles alone wastes everybody's interview time. It is also the sector where the strongest candidates are least likely to be applying to adverts.
The discipline behind the title, the software and standards they work to day to day, whether they have taken a design from concept to manufacture or picked it up mid-stream, and how much of the role was hands-on versus supervisory.
| Role | Location | Days to fill | Candidates screened |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electrician | Field-based across London sites, office in Essex | 56 | 108 |
| Field Service Engineer — meat processing equipment | Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire | 115 | 40 |
| CNC Programmer / Setter | The Midlands, relocation packages available | 60 | 37 |
Median 60 days, slower than our overall median of 42 across 46 filled roles. Full funnels for every one of these are on the engineering & manufacturing case studies.
A vacancy of that length at the pay currently advertised for a design engineer (£55,000) nets out at about £6,165 in output not produced, less the salary not paid — the cost of vacancy calculator shows every step of the sum. Before you settle on a salary, check what the local market is advertising for the same job title. Our published data covers both halves: how many applications an advert draws by sector and how long a vacancy takes to fill by sector.
| Salary band | Our flat fee | A 20% agency would bill |
|---|---|---|
| Roles up to £30,000 | £1,500 +VAT | up to £6,000 |
| £30,000 – £44,999 | £2,000 +VAT | £6,000 – £9,000 |
| £45,000 – £59,999 | £3,000 +VAT | £9,000 – £12,000 |
| £60,000 – £79,999 | £4,000 +VAT | £12,000 – £16,000 |
The engineering & manufacturing roles above paid between £35,000 and £45,000, which puts most of them in the £2,000–£3,000 bands. Every band gets a five-point review of the role, a dedicated recruiter and a screened shortlist.
A flat fee by salary band, agreed before the search and unchanged by the salary you agree: Roles up to £30,000 — £1,500 +VAT; £30,000 – £44,999 — £2,000 +VAT; £45,000 – £59,999 — £3,000 +VAT; £60,000 – £79,999 — £4,000 +VAT. There is no commission when you hire, and it starts with a five-point review of your role. The engineering & manufacturing roles we have filled paid between £35,000 and £45,000, so most sit in the £2,000–£3,000 range against £7,000–£9,000 at a 20% agency.
Across the 3 engineering & manufacturing vacancies we have filled and publish in full, the median was 60 days from brief to hire — slower than our overall median of 42 days across 46 roles. The fastest took 56 days and the slowest 115. We publish the slow ones too.
No. The fee is fixed by salary band before the search starts and does not move with the salary agreed. That is the whole point of the model, and the saving against a percentage grows as the role gets more senior.
The discipline behind the title, the software and standards they work to day to day, whether they have taken a design from concept to manufacture or picked it up mid-stream, and how much of the role was hands-on versus supervisory.
Advertise when someone in your business has the hours to screen technical CVs and the title is common in your area. Use a recruiter when the strongest candidates are already in work, the title means different things at different firms, or the role is senior enough that a percentage fee would be large. Either way, decide on evidence: the tables on this page show what engineering adverts actually drew and how long our engineering searches took.
Engineering vacancies ask for a specific discipline, software and set of standards, so the pool that can genuinely do the job is smaller than the pool that clicks. The best people in that pool are usually in work and not searching job boards, which is why headhunting matters more here than in most sectors.
Yes. Tell us what the advert drew and we will say plainly whether a search would change the outcome. If the advert runs its full 28 days without a hire, the full advert fee is credited against Premium Hire for the same role (claim within 60 days of close, one credit per role).
Across 71 engineering & manufacturing adverts we placed between 2025-10-03 and 2026-09-05, the median advert drew 15 applications over 28 days, the middle half drew between 6 and 41.5, and 21% drew fewer than five. The median across all 1,141 UK adverts was 31.
Yes, and sometimes you should. A £399 +VAT advert puts the role across the major job boards and sends you the applications. It took a median of 62 candidates worked to make one hire in engineering & manufacturing, so if somebody in your business genuinely has those hours, advertising is the cheaper route and we will say so.
Tell us the role and we will tell you what it costs and how long it is likely to take — using the 3 we have already filled in this sector, not a guess.
See Premium Hire Talk to a recruiter
Or call 0161 327 2895. Prefer to advertise it yourself? Post a job online from £399 +VAT, or write the advert first with our free job advert generator.
Cost comparison
A salary-band table of what a UK contingency agency bills at 15%, 20% and 25% against the published flat fees for the same search, from £30,000 to £75,000 — with the three cases where the percentage is still the better buy.
Cost comparison
Worked figures for a £45,000 UK hire — what a contingency agency bills at 15%, 20% and 25%, what the published flat fees are, what the real difference is once you count your own screening time, and the three situations where the agency is the better buy.
Benchmarks
The median role we filled took 42 days from brief to close, but the spread runs from 14 to 169 days. The per-sector breakdown, what actually drives the difference, and how to read a time-to-fill promise.
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