Photovoltaic systems jobs

Solar PV Engineering Jobs in Renewable Energy

Solar PV engineers design photovoltaic systems, from factory roofs to 200 MW ground-mounted plants: they size arrays and inverters, model shading and yield, lay out electrical and structural designs, and specify the grid connection.

The engineering has shifted towards large plants. In its December 2025 outlook, SolarPower Europe reported that the EU installed 65.1 GW of solar in 2025, the first annual decline since 2016, while solar farms made up more than half of new capacity for the first time. Home rooftop solar fell from 28% of new EU capacity in 2023 to 14% in 2025. For engineers, that means fewer quick residential designs and more multi-year utility-scale projects with complex grid and permitting work in the wider solar energy sector.

What PV engineers do

Design engineers start with a site: terrain, irradiance data, shading from trees and neighbouring rows, and the grid capacity available at the connection point. They choose between fixed-tilt and single-axis tracker structures, decide string lengths and inverter ratios, and run yield simulations in tools such as PVsyst to show investors what the plant will produce. Electrical engineers then design the DC and AC cabling, earthing, protection, and medium-voltage collection system, while structural engineers check mounting systems against wind and snow loads.

On utility-scale solar projects, the work continues through construction. Project engineers answer contractors' technical queries, review equipment against the specification, and support commissioning, where performance tests show whether the plant meets its contracted output. Owner's engineers do the same on behalf of investors, checking the EPC contractor's design rather than producing it.

Solar plus storage is the new default

Market prices are reshaping the design brief. SolarPower Europe warns that standalone solar farms face profitability problems from the rising number of negative-price hours, when midday solar floods the market. Developers increasingly respond by adding battery energy storage systems to shift output into the evening, which requires engineers who can size batteries, design shared grid connections, and model how a hybrid plant will actually be dispatched. A PV engineer who has delivered one hybrid project brings exactly that experience.

A tag with a lot of neighbours

Many listings near this tag are not engineering roles. Our data for PV systems includes large numbers of solar appointment setters, sales managers, and electricians, particularly from US residential installers such as Sunrun and Freedom Forever and German home-energy companies. Hands-on roofing and wiring work belongs to solar installation; PV engineering is the design and technical responsibility behind it.

The labour market reflects the same split. SolarPower Europe's jobs report counted 864,000 solar jobs in the EU in 2024 and expected around 40,000 to disappear in 2025, mostly in the job-intensive rooftop segment, before recovering to more than 916,000 by 2029. Engineering roles are less exposed to that swing, because they follow utility-scale pipelines rather than household demand.

Who is hiring

GOLDBECK SOLAR, the German EPC contractor for large ground-mounted and rooftop plants, is among the most active engineering employers, alongside IRISOLARIS in France and SOLV Energy, which builds and maintains utility-scale plants in the United States. Silfab Solar hires engineers in module manufacturing. Hamburg, Berlin, Prague, Dresden, and Madrid lead the locations. French listings also show a growing specialism in agrivoltaics, where engineers design arrays that share land with crops or livestock.