Engineering & Industrial Recruitment in Spain
Akens\Nordburg supports international companies in the search for engineers and technical specialists for industrial and engineering organisations.
We work particularly on positions where technical knowledge, sector experience or the combination of several capabilities reduces the available candidate market and makes direct access to that market necessary.
Spain is our core market, within an international practice with particular depth between Spain and Germany, Austria and Switzerland (DACH).
Technical profiles require an understanding of the industrial context
An industrial search is not defined only by a degree or a job title.
Two engineers with similar academic backgrounds may have worked with very different technologies, production processes, products or operating environments. In some assignments, those differences are precisely what determines whether a candidate can take on the role.
Before starting the search, we therefore need to understand which technical knowledge is genuinely required, which capabilities can be learned and which experience needs to be present from day one. This is particularly relevant when the company works with complex products, machinery, industrial installations, regulated processes or technical solutions sold to B2B customers.
A market smaller than the job title suggests
In engineering and industrial recruitment, the market can narrow quickly when several requirements are combined.
Experience with a specific technology, knowledge of an industrial process, customer-facing capability, willingness to travel, languages or a particular location can significantly reduce the number of suitable profiles. The search may look broad when analysed only through the professional title, but much more specific when the real experience required is examined.
Market Calibration and Market Mapping help us understand that market before concentrating Direct Search on the professionals who can genuinely fit the mandate.
Areas in which we work
Our experience includes searches across areas such as:
- engineering and project engineering;
- production and industrial processes;
- technical service and field service;
- maintenance and specialist technical support;
- quality and technical functions;
- Technical Procurement & Industrial Supply Chain;
- technical profiles with customer or project responsibility.
In Procurement and Supply Chain, we focus on positions where knowledge of products, materials, industrial processes or technical suppliers is a meaningful part of the role. The objective is not to cover generalist operations functions, but positions in which understanding the technical environment materially shapes the profile.
Selected assignments completed successfully
Senior Pipeline Engineer
Search in Spain for a German international company for a Senior Pipeline Engineer with specialist technical experience and knowledge of the requirements associated with infrastructure projects and regulated environments.
The number of professionals with a sufficiently comparable combination of experience was limited, so the search relied on direct market identification and selective candidate approach.
Technical Service Specialist — Industrial Machinery
Search for the Spanish subsidiary of a German industrial company for a technical service specialist for industrial machinery, based in Barcelona.
The position required a combination of mechanical and electrical knowledge, the ability to work directly on equipment and availability to travel to customers. Hands-on machinery experience and the field-service context carried more weight than purely formal correspondence with a specific job title.
When technical knowledge needs to coexist with other capabilities
Some of the most demanding industrial searches are not difficult because of one technical skill alone. The challenge appears when that technical base needs to be combined with other responsibilities: customer contact, project management, international coordination, languages or commercial capability.
This can be the case, for example, in Technical Service, Application Engineering, Project Engineering or certain Procurement and Supply Chain functions. In these situations, we look beyond the formal job description to understand which career paths may genuinely have developed that combination of capabilities.
When the principal responsibility of the position is commercial and the complexity lies in selling a technical solution, the mandate normally sits within our Technical Sales & Business Development practice.
Technical Sales & Business Development →Direct Search in technical markets
Many industrial specialists are not actively looking for a change and may have spent years working within a sector, a technology or a relatively small group of companies.
Direct access to the market is therefore particularly relevant in technical searches. We map companies and environments where the required experience may exist, identify individual professionals and test throughout the search how that market responds to the position.
This becomes even more important when a position has been open for some time and job advertising has generated candidates, but very few with the technical experience that is actually required. In those situations, we first review what the company has already learned from the market before launching essentially the same search again.
The resulting feedback can also reveal early whether factors such as location, mobility, languages or compensation are restricting the candidate pool more than expected.
Are you looking for a difficult-to-find technical profile?
If you need to hire an engineer or industrial specialist with a specific combination of technical, sector or international experience, we can review the mandate and the relevant market.