Finding experienced engineers remains the top personnel challenge across the industry, cited by 50% of respondents in the 2026 Engineering Industry Benchmark Report.
The pressure sitting alongside this challenge has also shifted. Managing project demand with current staff levels as a challenge has grown from 36% to 46% year on year, creating a compounding challenge: firms can’t hire the people they need, and they can’t keep up with workload using the team they currently have.
Retention Strategies Are Shifting
The tools firms are using to hold onto their best people are also changing. The use of competitive salaries as a retention strategy has dropped from 91% in 2025 to 67% in 2026, likely reflecting tighter budgetary conditions and a tougher economic climate. Professional development as a retention lever has fallen even more sharply, from 82% to 54%.
Despite those shifts, overall staff turnover has improved. The proportion of firms experiencing turnover above 20% has dropped from 8% in 2025 to 0% in 2026. That improvement suggests the firms holding onto their people are doing so through a combination of levers: work-life balance initiatives, strong culture and engagement, and flexible arrangements, rather than any single strategy.
The Engineering Talent Pipeline Isn’t Keeping Up
The difficulty of finding experienced engineers is not a new story for the industry, but it is becoming a more urgent one. With 47% of firms identifying talent shortages and hiring challenges as their biggest anticipated obstacle over the next five years, and 60% naming the skills pipeline as a trend set to have a significant impact on the industry, this challenge is becoming harder to ignore.
In the survey, firms said they are struggling to fill senior roles, managing workloads that exceed their current capacity, and competing for candidates in a market where experienced engineers are in short supply. The problem is not simply one of recruitment volume, but of depth. The mid-to-senior talent engineering firms need the most takes years to develop, and with training budgets contracting and formal career pathways still absent in more than a quarter of firms, the talent pipeline is not growing fast enough to meet the demand.
How Does Your Firm Compare?
The 2026 Engineering Industry Benchmark Report draws on responses from engineering practices across the globe to give the sector a clear picture of how firms are operating right now, covering opportunities and challenges spanning everything from profitability, staffing, technology and growth.
For more insights, and to discover how your margins, utilisation and business development efforts compare to firms like yours, download the report here to see the full picture.
About Total Synergy (Australia)
Total Synergy is an Australian software company based in North Sydney, NSW, helping architecture and engineering practices across Australia improve project visibility, resourcing, and profitability with project management and practice management software. Try Total Synergy for free today and discover how the platform can transform your firm.
