JCB is one of the UK’s largest privately owned engineering and manufacturing companies, the world’s third-largest manufacturer of construction machinery, and the developer of the world’s first hydrogen combustion engine for construction equipment. Since summer 2022, Murray McI ntosh has supplied engineers across the JCB group, beginning with that hydrogen engine programme.

The hydrogen engine programme needed highly technical engineers on a fixed development schedule. Murray McIntosh met that with an engineering practice able to work from a hiring manager’s specification exactly as written. That gave JCB a recruitment partner working at the pace its engineering programmes set.

JCB’s Power Systems division needed engineers to support development of the hydrogen combustion engine, a £100 million programme, at a stage when engineering resource was critical. Each role was highly technical, and every week a seat stayed empty was a week of development the programme could not recover.

Previous recruitment efforts had not delivered at the pace or quality the project demanded. The engineers also had to work effectively within established teams and adapt quickly to JCB’s ways of working, so a technically strong CV was only part of w hat each hiring manager needed.

Chris Nelson, Associate Director – Engineering, leads Murray McIntosh’s engineering practice. He holds a degree in mechanical engineering and has worked as an engineer, so JCB’s hiring managers, including Matthew Round, Principal Systems Engineer at JCB Power Systems, could describe their requirements in technical terms without anything needing to be translated. Before any CV is submitted,

Chris and the Engineering team work through a structured process with the hiring manager:

• Diagnosis – understanding why previous searches fell short.
• Requirements – defining the technical and personal requirements of the role.
• Team fit – assessing the structure of the team the engineer will join.
• Market mapping – mapping the candidate market before approaching anyone.

That groundwork is what lets the search move quickly once it starts: four CVs per role within 24 hours, with three in every four candidates going on to interview.

Between December 2022 and May 2023, Murray McIntosh placed twelve contractors into JCB’s Power Systems division, supporting the hydrogen engine programme through its most resource-critical phase. Introduced to JCB HQ, the team has since worked on project activity across Power Systems and Power Products, and into permanent hiring at principal and senior level.

As JCB’s net zero programme has expanded to include electric machinery and advanced Stage V diesel technology alongside hydrogen, the disciplines Murray McIntosh supplies have broadened in step. Placements now include calibration engineers working across dyno test environments and engine management systems, embedded systems and cybersecurity engineers preparing JCB’s connected machinery for EU Cyber Resilience Act requirements from 2027, software engineers building tractor cabin dashboard interfaces, and test and validation engineers across hydrogen and diesel product ranges.

The referrals that followed came from JCB’s own hiring managers. As Matthew Round put it: “Having produced results efficiently and accurately, I had no hesitation in recommending Chris and Murray McIntosh to other areas of the business that were experiencing similar.”

Murray McIntosh brings engineering understanding to the brief itself, and its client relationships grow through the hiring managers who work with it directly.