Fifteen Years of Renewable Energy Recruiting

It’s a quiet post-holiday afternoon in New Jersey, as I sit in my recliner next to my drying-out Christmas tree, getting ready to write my monthly Recruiter’s Outlook. I can hear the snow melting off my rooftop solar panels on this particularly warm day on the east coast. In digging through the archives of my Recruiter’s Outlook, skimming vintage articles to prepare for this month’s newsletter, I got hung up reading about the various cycles of renewable energy over the last 15 years since I’ve been living it. So for this Outlook, just before we ring in a new year, I’m taking you on my journey…

In April 2016, Renewable Energy World asked a few industry professionals (myself included) about their biggest concern for renewables for that year. If you’re an industry veteran, I’m sure you have a few friends who also commented on this list! Too bad none of us knew what was in store for that November… and too bad that my optimism was unproven in this December 2016 op-ed about how President Trump would be a catalyst for renewable energy growth. Obviously, my passion and enthusiasm for our industry can overshadow my being a realist at times.

In August of 2022, I thought the signing of the Inflation Reduction Act would bring an end to the bipartisan battle of renewable energy, and our last ride on the solar coaster. Boy, was I wrong! In fact, energy has become a tool to deepen the political divide, and, just today, Canary Media published a great piece laying out the offshore wind destruction enacted by the Trump administration over the past year.

Thank You For Reading!

2026 will mark ten years of writing my monthly Recruiter’s Outlook blog and sending out an EnergeiaWorks newsletter. Nearly 72,000 industry professionals receive our newsletter each month and, for that, I’m extremely grateful. Thank you for taking the time to read our newsletter each month. I know that we really appreciate the feedback we receive as we travel around North America conferences and walk the walk with all of you.

Feedback On 2025 Hiring

As you can imagine, renewable energy hiring in 2025 has been pretty soft. While no jobs data is officially out there yet, I’d even call it a downturn based on the activity we’ve seen over the past 12 months. While the political landscape can be blamed for some of it, not all can be blamed on the Trump administration. You can see the recently published data from the 2024 Solar Jobs Census show that job growth was flat even before Trump took office.

EnergeiaWorks started to see a change in hiring volume as the Federal Reserve began raising the interest rates to address high inflation. This most especially affected the capital for renewable energy project development and the jobs to support greenfield development.

Here’s a snapshot of EnergeiaWorks’ revenue by vertical in 2025:

• Solar PV 70%
• Energy Storage 14%
• Electric Vehicle Infrastructure 6%
• Carbon Sequestration 6%
• Wind 4%

Half of our successful placements in 2025 supported project development positions within solar (community, C&I, and utility-scale), EV infrastructure, and energy storage projects. Our next biggest customer base of hiring came from hardware manufacturers which consisted of 21% of our revenue. We typically always do a lot of development searches, but this is the highest volume on the manufacturing side in quite some time. This is a direct correlation to the reshoring of manufacturing jobs in the US.

Forecast on 2026 Job Market

In the second half of 2025, we saw an increase in hiring for engineering services and construction talent as developers are in a race against the clock to begin the construction process before the expiration of the federal tax credits. I expect this trend to continue in 2026. If you’re hiring for these types of jobs, start early, as talent will be in demand! The energy storage job market will remain hot in 2026 as storage project ITC doesn’t expire until 2033. Lastly, technologies serving the data center community will be the hottest thing in the overall energy sector. We saw a lot of this in 2025 with developers selling their offtake to hardware and software companies launching full product suites targeting the data center developers and owners.

Hiring top clean energy talent in 2026?

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