A broad view of the Scottish labour market for advanced connectivity, weighted to entry-stage roles because that is what the SPRINT platform connects. Organisations are named. Individuals are not.
So what for SPRINT: the constraint is not the talent pool or the employer base. It is that entry routes are informal in nine of ten role families, and no one owns them. The most useful output of the workshop is a named owner for each missing route.
Advanced connectivity in Scotland is not one industry. It is a set of overlapping capabilities that sit inside defence electronics, space, telecoms operators and their contractors, photonics, and a long tail of SMEs. The workforce falls into five clusters.
Leonardo at Edinburgh Technopole is the largest single employer in the data (about 90 people identified, 35 of them in RF and microwave) and the largest advertiser. Honeywell Aerospace, Thales, Sofant Technologies (mmWave phased arrays), Zenovo, CodaOctopus, Shure and STMicroelectronics add depth in RF, embedded and electro-optics.
Spire Global, AAC Clyde Space, Alba Orbital and Exotopic form the satellite and ground-segment cluster. Coherent, the Fraunhofer Centre for Applied Photonics, Vector Photonics and Chromacity anchor optical. Strathclyde's StrathSDR lab, the University of Glasgow 5G testbed, Neutral Wireless, AWTG and Picocom carry the Open RAN and private 5G work.
Openreach (48 people identified), Vodafone, Virgin Media, BT, Sky, Neos Networks, Commsworld, GoFibre and the fibre contractors (AmcoGiffen, United Infrastructure, Diona, BUUK). Project Gigabit Scotland (£157m to Openreach, May 2025, plus Borders, East Lothian and North East lots) is driving field demand.
Aberdeen holds about 165 people, mostly network and wireless roles serving offshore energy operations. Dundee, Livingston (electronics manufacturing, including Plexus), Kirkcaldy and Falkirk each hold small populations. CENSIS in Glasgow connects IoT capability to SMEs across the Highlands and Islands.
The ten families below are a starting taxonomy built from what the Scottish market actually employs and advertises. Counts are of people currently in those roles in Scotland, from public career records, and of live adverts observed on 9 September 2026.
| Role family | People | Early-career | Senior | Live vacancies | Early-stage | Scottish entry route |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Network, core and private networks | 257 | 7 | 69 | 12 | 1 | Informal. Two named graduate schemes nearby (Network Rail, ScottishPower telecoms); IT networking is the scalable route in. |
| Optical and photonic communications | 241 | 25 | 62 | 12 | 3 | Exists. Fraunhofer CAP absorbs physics graduates; Leonardo graduate optical engineer (£34k). Depends on one institution. |
| Wireless systems, 5G/6G, Open RAN, DSP | 226 | 9 | 71 | 6 | 0 | Missing. Research base is strong (StrathSDR, Glasgow testbed); no named graduate or apprenticeship route; 5G Centre in transition. |
| RF, microwave and antenna | 218 | 8 | 112 | 28 | 1 | Informal. No RF degree or apprenticeship in Scotland; graduates convert from electronics on the job, mostly at Leonardo. |
| Commercial and customer-facing | 183 | 2 | 144 | 4 | 0 | Missing. No sector commercial graduate route; entry is by lateral move from other tech sales or project roles. |
| Fibre and network build (field) | 163 | 6 | 15 | 2 | 1 | Formal. Telecommunications Modern Apprenticeship (SDS); Project Gigabit demand. Constraint is uptake, not design. |
| Test, validation and conformance | 151 | 5 | 53 | 4 | 0 | Partial. Technician entry exists at Leonardo and Plexus; no RF test apprenticeship; ex-forces test trades transfer well. |
| Embedded, firmware and IoT connectivity | 134 | 3 | 52 | 3 | 0 | Informal. Software engineers transfer in; FPGA/DSP is the sub-track with no route; CENSIS places IoT project engineers. |
| Satellite communications and ground segment | 101 | 9 | 35 | 3 | 0 | Missing. No satcom or spacecraft-operations apprenticeship; Spire and AAC hire senior; ex-forces satellite trades are the readiest pool. |
| Explicit early-career roles (cross-cutting) | 115 | 45 | 11 | 4 | 0 | People in graduate, intern or trainee titles across the sector; a signal that entry hiring happens, not a family in its own right. |
Early-career and senior are read from current job titles (graduate, junior, trainee, apprentice, technician, intern versus senior, principal, lead, head, manager, director). People between those markers are counted as mid-career.
Leonardo 21 · Spire Global 6 · AAC Clyde Space 4 · Expleo 2 · Thales 2 · Emerson 2 · then one each from Honeywell Aerospace, Rohde & Schwarz, AST SpaceMobile, Motorola Solutions, Siemens, AmcoGiffen, United Infrastructure, Shure, Zenovo, Fortinet, Adaptive Group, A2e, PPS UK and others. 9 of the 78 roles (12%) are advertised through an agency rather than the employer.
Graduate Systems Engineer, Motorola Solutions (Glasgow) · Junior Network Analyst, Ember Core (Edinburgh, £40,000 to £50,000) · Manufacturing Technician, Leonardo (Edinburgh, £31,000 to £35,500) · Test Technician/Engineer, Leonardo (Edinburgh) · Junior CAD Technician, photonics, two agency adverts (Glasgow, £35,000). Nearby, outside the sector count: ScottishPower's Telecoms Graduate scheme (Glasgow, £35,000 plus £3,000), Network Rail's Electronic and Communications graduate scheme (Edinburgh, £28,800), Keysight's Open RAN and 6G research intern (Midlothian).
By family, RF and microwave carries 28 of the 78 live roles, network and core 12, optical 12. Wireless systems, satellite, embedded, test and commercial each have between three and six. The pattern is consistent: employers advertise for people who can already do the job, and rely on a graduate trickle for the rest.
Strathclyde, Glasgow, Heriot-Watt and Edinburgh produce several hundred electronics and electrical engineering graduates a year; that pool feeds RF, wireless, embedded and test. Strathclyde's EEE programmes map explicitly onto 5G, software-defined radio and Open RAN. Physics and photonics graduates from the same universities plus St Andrews feed optical roles through Fraunhofer CAP. No standalone RF or microwave degree exists in Scotland, so RF entrants specialise on the job over six to eighteen months.
The Telecommunications Modern Apprenticeship is the only formal Skills Development Scotland route into any of the ten families. Technician entry exists in practice at Leonardo (manufacturing and test technicians) and Plexus, but is not written up as a progression pathway. No apprenticeship standard covers RF, FPGA, satellite ground segment or spacecraft operations in Scotland.
| From | Into | How ready |
|---|---|---|
| IT networking, cloud and cyber (financial services and public sector in Edinburgh and Glasgow) | Telecoms core, private 5G, network operations | High. Skills map directly; a first junior analyst role or a telecoms conversion placement is enough. |
| Software engineers with C/C++ and real-time experience | Embedded and firmware on the connectivity stack | High for embedded; FPGA/DSP needs a conversion module or a supervised first year. |
| Physics and laser-physics graduates | Optical and photonic communications | High, and the route exists; the constraint is the size of the graduate cohort. |
| Ex-forces communications trades (Royal Signals, RAF, Royal Navy) | Field engineering, RF test, ground stations, satcom | Highest direct transfer of any group, and Scotland's bases put the pool near the jobs. No resettlement-to-connectivity pathway exists. |
| Civils and electrical trades | Fibre and network build | High, and the Modern Apprenticeship is there to formalise it. |
| Account managers, project managers and technical sales from other technology sectors; returners | Commercial, pre-sales, product, programme roles | High. This is where returners most often re-enter, and where the sector has no structured entry at all. |
| Band | What it buys in Scotland today | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| £28,000 to £35,500 | First roles: manufacturing or test technician, fibre field technician, sales account manager, graduate scheme entry at a utility or rail operator. | Leonardo technician £31,000 to £35,500; Clear Business account manager £28,000 to £31,000; Network Rail graduate £28,800; ScottishPower telecoms graduate £35,000. |
| £35,000 to £45,000 | Graduate engineering entry across most technical families; fibre engineer; junior network analyst. | Leonardo all-levels floor £37,400; graduate optical engineer £34,000; junior network analyst £40,000 to £50,000; fibre engineer £35,000 to £55,000; UK graduate RF band £35,000 to £45,000. |
| £45,000 to £70,000 | Mid-level: embedded software, FPGA and DSP design, platform engineer, electro-optic systems, IoT product design, satellite network engineer. | Zenovo embedded £55,000; CodaOctopus FPGA/DSP £50,000 to £70,000; Spire satellite network £50,000 to £70,000. |
| £60,000 to £98,000 | Senior and principal permanent roles. | Leonardo lead electronics £60,000 to £85,000; principal RF permanent £53,300 to £71,400; senior technical specialist to £97,515. |
| £119,000 to £162,000 | Principal RF engineer on contract, annualised. | Two concurrent Edinburgh agency listings. The contract premium over the permanent equivalent is 80% to 120%, which is what the shortage costs employers. |
Salary figures are published employer or advert figures, or published UK guides where noted; all are market estimates and presented as such.
Ten families, with the early-stage roles the platform could realistically fill first. Each is a proposal to accept, merge or strike.
| Family | Priority roles (entry to mid) | Suggested status |
|---|---|---|
| RF, microwave and antenna | RF design engineer, RF test engineer, RF systems engineer | Priority. Needs a named graduate RF route; Leonardo is the obvious anchor. |
| Wireless systems, 5G/6G, Open RAN, DSP | Wireless systems engineer, Open RAN integration engineer, DSP algorithm engineer | Priority. Needs a successor host for research-to-employment conversion, and SMEs willing to hire from placements. |
| Satellite communications and ground segment | Spacecraft operations engineer, ground segment software engineer, satellite RF engineer | Priority. Ask Spire and AAC Clyde Space about a small near-graduate intake; build a ground-station technician route. |
| Optical and photonic communications | Photonic design engineer, laser systems engineer, optical communications engineer | Priority. Route exists; diversify beyond Fraunhofer CAP to Sivers, Ceres, Vector and Coherent. |
| Embedded, firmware and IoT connectivity | Embedded software engineer, firmware engineer, FPGA/DSP engineer, IoT engineer | Priority. Software-to-firmware conversion with an FPGA/HDL module attached to a first-year placement. |
| Network, core and private networks | Junior network analyst, core network engineer, private 5G engineer | Priority. Most scalable route in (IT networking); ask operators for named graduate places. |
| Test, validation and conformance | Test technician, electronics test engineer, RF test and integration engineer | Secondary. Formalise the technician-to-engineer ladder that already exists in practice. |
| Fibre and network build | Fibre apprentice, fibre and telecoms field engineer, telecoms project engineer | Retain. The framework exists; the job is uptake with Openreach and the contractors. |
| Commercial and customer-facing | Bid or commercial analyst, account manager, pre-sales engineer, product manager | Priority. No entry route at all; ScottishPower's telecoms graduate scheme is the nearest model. |
| Early-career entry points | Graduate, intern, trainee roles across the sector | Keep as a cross-cutting measure, not a separate family. |
People counts come from an analysis of 8,701 public professional career records located in Scotland, of which 1,789 are people currently in advanced connectivity roles. Vacancy counts come from live job adverts across Scotland observed on 9 September 2026, de-duplicated across boards. Market facts are drawn from published announcements, procurement records, the statutory register and published salary sources, each dated.
Two cautions. Public career records over-represent large employers, whose staff keep fuller public profiles than SME staff, so a small firm's absence from the employer figures is not evidence that it lacks these people. And career stage is read from job titles, which understates early-career numbers at employers that do not use graduate or junior titles.
This briefing names organisations only. GRW Scout can run a per-employer or per-role-family candidate search on request; that is the product in which individuals are identified.