Offshore engineering jobs

Marine & Offshore Engineering Jobs in Renewable Energy

Marine and offshore engineering covers the design, installation, and operation of energy infrastructure at sea: foundations and substation platforms, the vessels that install them, subsea cables, and the marine operations that move people and equipment offshore safely. Almost all of the demand comes from offshore wind. GWEC forecasts more than 327 GW of new offshore wind capacity over the next decade, taking the global fleet from 92.5 GW at the end of 2025 to around 420 GW by 2035, and every gigawatt needs foundations driven, cables buried, and vessels booked.

What the work involves

The field splits into a few distinct specialisms. Structural and geotechnical engineering teams design monopiles, jackets, and anchors against wave loads, soil conditions, and fatigue over a 25 to 30 year life. Installation engineers plan the lifts, sea-fastening, and vessel procedures for each campaign, working to weather limits that decide whether a crew works or waits. Cable installation and subsea engineers handle route engineering, burial, and protection of array and export cables, and ROV pilot technicians carry out the underwater inspections and interventions. Offshore substations, increasingly built around HVDC transmission for far-offshore projects, bring their own mechanical, electrical, and structural roles.

Titles in the data reflect that spread: Cable Installation Engineer, Principal Engineer Subsea Installation, Senior ROV Pilot Technician, Mechanical Engineer for offshore substations, Tender Engineer, and Project Engineering Director for HVDC.

Who is hiring

The large Dutch and Belgian marine contractors dominate: DEME, Boskalis, Van Oord, Heerema Marine Contractors, and Seaway7 install foundations, turbines, and cables worldwide and hire engineers into their tendering, engineering, and offshore project teams. That explains why Leiden, Rotterdam, and Zoetermeer sit among the top locations. Semco Maritime in Esbjerg builds and services offshore substations, KODIAK supplies offshore technical personnel, and SSE Renewables hires marine specialists on the developer side. Wärtsilä, the largest employer by listings, recruits for marine engine and vessel power systems, which puts it in the supply chain for the installation and service fleet itself.

Aberdeen leads the location list, followed by Esbjerg, Hamburg, and Copenhagen, with Gdynia on Poland's Baltic coast and Oslo also in the top ten. Swedish developer CorPower Ocean, which operates its wave energy devices off Viana do Castelo in Portugal, is the most active employer in tidal and wave energy, a field still at pilot scale but one that draws on exactly the same marine skills.

Backgrounds and outlook

Oil and gas is the natural source of experienced hires. Subsea engineers, ROV technicians, marine warranty surveyors, and offshore installation managers from the North Sea move across with little retraining, which is why Aberdeen and Esbjerg remain hubs even as their oil and gas work declines. Naval architecture and marine engineering graduates are the main entry route for new engineers, while offshore survival and medical certificates are required for anyone going offshore.

The pipeline is large but uneven. GWEC also reports that only 11.4 GW of offshore wind was procured in auctions in 2025, a fifth of the 2024 record, so contractors are hiring for projects already under construction while the next wave of awards waits on auction design and grid connections. Engineers with cable and HVDC experience are the least exposed to that gap, because every project that does proceed needs them.