Usually because the salary band hasn’t moved, the travel expectation is higher than the market will take, or the process is slower than the engineers you’re interviewing. Rarely because the engineers don’t exist.
We hear “there’s a talent shortage” on most first calls. What we see on the same calls is a pay and process problem. The engineers are out there, employed, and not applying to anything. Around half the automation engineering workforce is 55 or over (Automation World 2025 Salary and Career Survey), so the pool isn’t growing, but the people in it will move for the right role.
Pay is the first check. Some of the largest integrators in the country are still working from salary bands set before Covid, and smaller firms with current bands are outbidding them for the same engineers. If your band for a senior Rockwell engineer is where it was in 2021, the engineers who could do the job are earning above it already. Mid level GMP automation engineers in the Midwest are now landing between $130,000 and $160,000. Ignition engineers with four or more years are between $95,000 and $130,000 across Ohio, Virginia, the Carolinas and Louisiana. End users are paying something like 20% more than integrators for the same engineer.
Travel is the second. The compensation conversation has shifted and a lot of hiring managers haven’t caught up. For the best engineers, flexibility now beats salary. “Up to 50% travel” was a normal line in a spec five years ago. Today it’s the line that ends most conversations before pay is discussed. Where the work genuinely needs someone on site, say how many days and let the rest be remote. Where it doesn’t, drop it.
Process is the third, and it’s the one that loses the engineers you’ve already found. Engineers open to a move are talking to two or three companies at once, and some have offers inside a week of a first interview. A process with three rounds spread over a month is a process that produces a shortlist of people who’ve already accepted somewhere else.
The fix is the same in all three cases. Get the salary to where the market is, state the travel in days, and run the interviews in two weeks with one person who can say yes.
