Solar installation jobs

Solar Installation Jobs in Renewable Energy

Solar installation is the physical work of building a PV system: fixing mounting structures to roofs or driving piles into the ground, placing modules, running DC and AC cabling, and connecting inverters and the rest of the balance of system. It is where most solar energy jobs sit. SolarPower Europe's EU Solar Jobs Report 2025 counted a record 865,000 solar jobs in the EU at the end of 2024, 86% of them in deployment rather than manufacturing.

Two different trades under one name

Installation splits sharply by project size. Rooftop solar crews of two to five people fit a home system in a day or two, work at height on every job, and deal with customers, roof structures, and increasingly home batteries and heat pumps. Utility-scale solar construction is closer to civil engineering: hundreds of workers on one site for months, pile-driving rigs, tracker assembly, trenching, and medium-voltage cabling, with a strict commissioning sequence at the end.

The electrical side is what separates a solar installer from a roofer or a labourer. In most European countries and US states, the final connection must be signed off by a qualified electrician, which is why Electrician, Journeyman Electrician, and "Elektroniker Photovoltaik" are among the most common titles in this category, next to Solar Installer, Solar Technician, and Lead Installer. Installers who hold an electrical qualification move into lead and supervisory roles, or across into electrical installation more broadly. A striking share of the listings are not installation roles at all but appointment setters and field sales consultants, a sign of how much residential solar depends on door-to-door and in-home selling.

Who is hiring

Residential installers dominate by volume. Sunrun, the largest US residential solar company, posted more listings than any other employer in this category in the past year, followed in the US by Venture Solar, Momentum Solar, and Freedom Solar Power. In Europe, Good Energy hires installers and electricians in England, IRISOLARIS recruits across France, and Svea Solar builds home systems in Sweden, Germany, and other markets. On the utility-scale side, contractors such as SOLV Energy and Signal Energy hire solar technicians and site crews for large US projects.

Locations mirror both markets: Houston, Austin, Chicago, and San Diego in the US; Lincoln and Ringwood in England; Hamburg and Cologne in Germany; and Prague.

A market that has cooled at the rooftop end

The boom that followed the 2022 energy crisis has passed its peak in European residential solar. SolarPower Europe reports that the rooftop segment's share of the EU solar workforce fell from 73% in 2022 to 59% in 2024, and it expected total EU solar employment to drop by around 5% in 2025 before recovering to about 916,000 jobs by 2029. For installers, that shifts the demand towards commercial rooftops, ground-mounted parks, and repair and maintenance of the millions of systems already installed, work that overlaps with solar operations and maintenance.