How to move into the energy transition

The energy sector is short of people and says so constantly. It is also, in practice, awkward to break into — not because it is closed, but because it hires on a vocabulary outsiders do not have and screens on experience that sounds more specific than it is.

This is what actually works, based on what the roles on this board ask for.

Start by being honest about which door you are at

There are three, and they are very different in width.

Wide open: your function, applied to energy. Software, data, finance, procurement, legal, HR, marketing, HSE, supply chain. Energy companies need all of these and hire them on general competence. A payments engineer can become an energy-software engineer in one move. This is the route most people should take and the one most people skip, because it feels like it does not count as "getting into energy". It does. You will learn the domain in the job, which is the only place anyone learns it.

Ajar: adjacent technical experience. Industrial automation, oil and gas, utilities, construction, manufacturing, automotive. The engineering transfers, the regulatory environment mostly transfers, and the main work is translating your CV into the sector's vocabulary. Oil and gas backgrounds in particular are far more welcome than the internet suggests — offshore project delivery is offshore project delivery.

Narrow: the regulated disciplines. Power systems engineering, protection, high-voltage design, nuclear safety. These need real qualifications and there is no shortcut. Listings that ask for them mean it. If this is where you want to end up, the route is a part-time MSc or a graduate scheme, and it is measured in years rather than months.

Most disappointment in this transition comes from someone at door one behaving as if they are at door three — assuming they need a new degree when what they needed was to apply.

Pick one sub-sector, not "energy"

"I want to work in the energy transition" is not a search. The sub-sectors have different economics, different employers and different skills, and someone who has picked one is immediately more credible than someone who has not.

A rough guide to choosing:

• Storage if you like optimisation and markets. The engineering is real but the value is created by knowing when to charge and discharge.
• Grid if you want the biggest bottleneck in the whole transition. Unfashionable, enormous, and hiring hard.
• Hydrogen if you want heavy industry and long projects, and can tolerate a sector that has already had one hype cycle deflate.
• Solar and wind if you want mature industries with established career paths.
• Energy software if you are coming from tech and want to keep your existing skills doing something else.

What to learn, in the order it pays off

The mistake is starting with the technology. Nobody will ask you how a lithium cell works. They will ask why a project makes money.

First, the economics of your chosen sub-sector. How does a battery earn revenue? (Arbitrage, balancing services, capacity payments — in proportions that differ by country.) Why is a grid connection worth more than the land? Why did that hydrogen project get cancelled? This is a weekend of reading and it is the single highest-return thing you can do.

Second, the vocabulary. Curtailment, congestion, balancing, PPA, offtake, FID, TSO and DSO, capacity market, imbalance. You do not need to be able to lecture on them. You need to not stop the conversation.

Third, the local market. Energy is intensely national — the same technology has different economics on either side of a border because the market design differs. Knowing how the country you want to work in runs its market is a real differentiator, and it is where most candidates are weakest.

Last, the technology. Genuinely last. It is the most interesting part and the least useful in an interview.

Writing the application

Three things that change outcomes more than anything else on the CV.

Translate, do not omit. "Reduced settlement discrepancies across a payments network" is grid balancing with different nouns. Energy hiring managers are not good at spotting transferable experience on their own — this is a known weakness of the sector — so do the translation for them explicitly, in the covering letter, in their vocabulary.

Name the sub-sector and say why. Two sentences on why storage rather than solar, with an actual reason in them, outperforms a paragraph about being passionate about sustainability. Everyone applying is passionate about sustainability. It carries no information.

Apply to the small companies. The large operators receive enormous volumes of applications from people who want to work in energy and get filtered on domain keywords. A forty-person storage company hiring its second software engineer will read your CV properly and interview you the same week.

What to expect

Pay is mixed. Coming from tech or finance, a move into a developer or manufacturer is often a cut, sometimes a substantial one. Energy software and trading are competitive with what you are used to. Nobody on this board will tell you otherwise, and anyone claiming the transition pays uniformly well is selling something.

Timelines are longer. Both the hiring processes and the work. A project you join now may be commissioned in four years. This is a feature if you like it and a genuine problem if you do not.

Hybrid, not remote. Most of this sector has a physical thing somewhere.

The sector is welcoming and slow. People will take a call, answer questions and introduce you to someone. And the process will still take three months.

The interview, and what it is really asking

Energy interviews are less structured than tech ones and the signal they are looking for is narrower than it appears.

"Why energy?" is a real question, not a warm-up. The sector has been burned by people who arrived for the mission and left when the pace and the pay became apparent. A specific answer — a sub-sector, a reason, something you have read — beats a sincere general one, because it demonstrates you have already done the part most people skip.

Expect to be asked something you cannot answer. Someone will ask about a market mechanism or a piece of kit you have never encountered. The tested behaviour is what you do next: "I do not know, here is how I would find out" is the correct answer and a surprising number of candidates bluff instead. In a sector where a wrong number can be an eight-figure mistake, bluffing is disqualifying.

Bring one thing you have actually modelled or built. It does not have to be energy-related. A spreadsheet where you worked out whether a battery would pay for itself in your own country is a better artefact than a certificate, and it is a weekend of work.

What to do in your first year

Learn the regulation, not just the technology. The constraint on almost every project is permitting, grid connection or market rules. Someone who understands those is useful immediately, and it is learnable in a way that a power-systems degree is not.

Get near an asset. A site visit, a commissioning trip, a control room. Everything in this sector is easier to reason about once you have seen the physical thing, and the people who have are visibly different in meetings from those who have not.

Do not specialise too fast. The transition is reorganising itself continuously, and the sub-sector that is hiring hardest today is not necessarily the one that is in three years. Breadth in the first couple of years buys optionality that is expensive to acquire later.

Practical next steps

1. Pick one sub-sector this week.
2. Read how it makes money in the country you want to work in.
3. Set an alert for that sub-sector so new roles reach you rather than the other way round.
4. Apply to the small companies first.

Not sure what the job titles mean yet? Who actually does what. Want the geography first? Where the energy jobs are.