| Engineering for a better environment |
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| Project engineers, sales managers, and finance specialists: young cleantech companies are hiring on all levels – great opportunities for experts in a growing industry. |
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| London or Munich; Silicon Valley or Saxony Valley; engineering, finance, marketing, or business development: The Wellington cleantech portfolio is looking for talent in all areas and on all levels. Here's a quick snapshot of new vacancies: GLO is looking for a California-based Director of Process Development; Heliatek is hiring a Senior Process Engineer; Orcan is seeking a Senior Technical Procurement Manager, our companies post new jobs on our careers website nearly every day. Why not check it out: www.wellington-partners.com/careers |
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| The professionalization of the cleantech industry |
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| The swift expansion of the workforce is a positive sign for the growth of our portfolio. However, it’s more than that: Currently, the entire cleantech sector is professionalizing at high speed. After years of governmental assistance and supportive environmental legislation, cleantech is now becoming a "normal" business, standing on its own and winning over businesses and residential customers based on real merits. The combination of economy and ecology is what has characterized the Wellington cleantech portfolio from the beginning, and what is now causing its rapid growth. |
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| Enecsys is a perfect example of this. This University of Cambridge spin-off develops, manufactures, and markets a new generation of micro-inverters. These enable solar systems to harvest more energy at lower cost, resulting in significant savings over conventional systems. This technological edge holds the potential for an industry altering effect on the $4.5 billion global inverter market. The rapidly-rising demand explains why the company is now hiring on all continents; Taiwan, Silicon Valley, as well as New York and Frankfurt. |
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| AZZURRO Semiconductors is sourcing talent around the world for its technology center in Dresden. This manufacturer of ultra-high-quality Gallium Nitride epi wafers is looking for experts globally to strengthen its team at its new production site in Dresden. So far they have attracted talent from Japan, Russia, Taiwan, the US, and, yes, even from Germany. The company is seeking highly-specialized engineers to drive the development of these wafers, which are used in the power electronics industry to build high-performance devices and in the LED industry to manufacture inexpensive LEDs. In both cases, AZZURRO's technology helps to lower production costs and raise energy efficiency at the same time. |
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| Biomass gasification specialist Agnion has its development and production base in Southern Germany. Its patented Heatpipe-Reformer technology allows a gasification of biomass at competitive cost with much higher efficiency than conventional technologies. Agnion plants are a perfect fit for small country towns, where biomass is readily available. It has already attracted several buyers. In order to stay on its accelerated growth path, the company is mainly looking for engineers to design and build plants simultaneously. |
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| More engineers are needed for on-going expansion |
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| Engineering for a better environment should be the perfect challenge for this ecology-minded generation. Why then are employers having such a hard time filling their vacancies? For three main reasons: |
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| 01 | Engineers are scarce. In Germany alone, vacancies for engineers have risen to over 75,000; more than tripling since 2005. |
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| 02 | The often mentioned "War for Talent" has started, giving even less experienced candidates a wide range of opportunities. Therefore individuals with talent and relevant experience have their pick – why not choose an exciting environment in a fast growing industry. |
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| 03 | A high degree of specialization. Each company is looking for experts in a certain field: While nanowire LED specialist GLO and AZZURRO are welcoming engineers with an LED background, Munich-based EnOcean needs experts with knowledge in the field of building automation and sensor technology. |
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| Many companies are located in cleantech hubs |
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| As a result of the scarcity of experienced talent, a lot of cleantech companies have closely associated themselves with universities in cleantech hubs. Munich-based Agnion, EnOcean and our latest cleantech investment Orcan, which develops an ultra compact, cost-effective waste heat-to-electricity converter, all profit from close connections to the TU Munich, one of the "Universities of Excellence" in Germany. AZZURRO has moved to Dresden, the so-called Silicon Saxony, where another renowned German technical university is based. Dresden is also the home of Heliatek, a global tech leader in the field of organic photovoltaics. Although, like Cambridge spin-off Enecsys, GLO is now Silicon Valley based, the University of Lund in Sweden still has a core development group tinkering at the next generation of nanowires. |
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| However, the local talent pool is not enough to fulfill all the needs of our portfolio companies. As the cleantech industry globalizes, the companies require an internationalized workforce, widening their field of applicants. This is a great opportunity for both junior and senior professionals to gain experience in a fast-growing industry, e.g. as an engineer of HV development at AZZURRO, a CAD plant designer at Agnion, or an east coast regional sales director at Enecsys. |
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| Welcome to the fast track! |
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Wellington talent manager Sabine Scherer discusses the impact of the professionalization of the cleantech industry on the candidates' and employees' working environments and their career perspectives. |
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| Due to the scarcity of natural resources and the effects of global warming, the cleantech industry now stands at the precipice of long-term growth, requiring companies to begin long-term expansion of their workforce. Joining a young cleantech company today means working in multinational teams in a global environment. Start-ups benefit from globalization in many ways: They are able to start manufacturing in Asia while being headquartered in Europe or in the U.S., where their main customer base is located. Cleantech hubs like Cambridge, Munich, or Lund are ideal locations for R&D, while sales and marketing has to be present in every major market. Employees of this industry are building up the right momentum by gaining indispensable international experience from Day One. |
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Sabine Scherer
Portfolio Talent Manager |
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| When talent in high growth industries succeed, doors open for the further progress their careers. It is a natural process in fast-growing companies that management rapidly gives ownership to their employees once they have proven their required skills. Since there is a constant need for good people at the senior level, chances are that talent is promoted quickly. Compared to the professional development at larger companies this can lead to a drastically accelerated career trajectory. |
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| Don't get me wrong; I am not talking about a quick win for all. The cleantech industry is a vast sector and every sub-industry needs a different set of expertise. While some of our cleantech companies are working on cost-effective and energy efficient LED solutions, others are constructing biomass plants. They are looking for junior and senior engineering and development professionals with very different and specialized industry knowledge. Even for sales and marketing, deep and focused industry know-how is key, but not enough. In order to cope with a fast-developing working environment, every applicant also needs to have a passion for growth, an entrepreneurial spirit, and the desire of a high level of responsibility. If candidates accept these challenges, they have the potential to merge their individual careers with the developments of a fast-growing sector. |
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