Key findings:

• The Environmental & Sustainability sector has the highest proportion of entry-level engineering opportunities across all engineering disciplines analysed at 16%, above the national average.
• An average of just 9% of engineering vacancies in the past year have been entry-level roles, despite total vacancies increasing by 633%.
• Product Management is the most inaccessible industry for entry-level candidates with just 3.6% of jobs being for entry-level candidates.
• The General Engineering industry sits at the national average of 9% of roles being open at entry-level.

The most entry-level friendly industries for rookie engineers:

The Environmental & Sustainability sector offers the strongest opportunities for those starting an engineering career, with 16.3% of its 3,801 vacancies advertised at entry level. Science & Research follows closely behind at 15.7%, while Healthcare ranks third, with 12.5% of its 344 engineering vacancies open to entry-level candidates.

Data Science also performs above the national average, with 11.3% of its 6,518 vacancies aimed at entry-level engineers, followed by Design & Creative at 10.4%. General Engineering, which accounts for the largest number of vacancies in the dataset at 105,698, sits exactly in line with the national average, with 9% of roles available to those starting their careers.

At the other end of the table, Product Management offers the fewest opportunities for rookie engineers, with just 3.6% of its 1,964 vacancies advertised at entry level. Cybersecurity is similarly difficult to break into, with only 5% of its 6,193 roles aimed at entry-level candidates, while AI & Machine Learning offers 6.7% of its 5,981 engineering vacancies to those starting out.

Entry-level engineering jobs remain low while total roles increase 633%:

For the complete data of all cities analysed, please click here.

Back in June 2025, there were a total of just 3,466 engineering vacancies, with 243 (7.01%) being entry-level jobs. The number of total vacancies has rapidly increased since then, with January 2026 being the peak, with 28,819 total vacancies and 2,450 (8.50%) entry-level jobs, and most recently, June 2026 had 25,410 vacancies with 1,547 (6.09%) being entry-level.

The proportion of entry-level vacancies hit its peak in September 2025 with 15.18% of the 9072 total vacancies at entry level, which is expected as September is the start of the educational term time where a higher volume of apprentices and graduates will be recruited. November 2025 saw the highest total of entry-level vacancies with 2,849, however this is just 12.38% of the 23,008 total vacancies that month.

In June 2026, despite a much higher volume of entry-level vacancies recorded, the proportion of entry-level jobs available was nearly 1% lower than it was this time last year.

Alastair Morris, Managing Director at Accu, comments:

“Engineering is evolving rapidly, with emerging industries such as environmental sustainability, science and data science creating some of the strongest opportunities for people at the beginning of their careers. However, our findings also show that the growth of the engineering sector isn’t necessarily translating into more opportunities for rookie engineers across every industry.

“With total engineering vacancies increasing significantly, it’s encouraging to see sectors such as Environmental & Sustainability offering a higher proportion of entry-level roles. As the UK looks to build the engineering workforce it will need for the future, businesses should continue investing in graduate, apprentice and trainee positions to ensure young engineers have a clear route into the industry.

“Engineering is becoming increasingly important to areas such as AI, sustainability and advanced manufacturing, so ensuring there are opportunities for people to develop their careers in these fields will be vital to maintaining the UK’s position as an engineering leader.”