A mechanical engineering requisition at a US manufacturer rarely stays open because no one wants the job. It stays open because too many companies are chasing the same narrow pool of candidates who already know US manufacturing processes, safety codes, and plant systems, and that pool has not grown at the same pace as demand.
For HR and talent acquisition teams running a 6 to 18 month implementation program, that gap shows up as a stalled ERP rollout, a controls upgrade that slips a quarter, or a contractor who leaves halfway through a project and takes months of institutional knowledge with them. Nearshore staff augmentation from Latin America has become one of the more practical ways manufacturers are closing it.
This article looks at why mechanical, electrical, and automation engineering roles are so difficult to fill in the US right now, what a nearshore engagement actually looks like, and how it holds up against the alternative of waiting out a long US search.
Part of the difficulty is simple math. The median annual wage for mechanical engineers was $102,320 in May 2024, and demand keeps climbing on top of that. Electrical engineers earn even more, with a median of $111,910, and industrial engineers, who often run the process and systems side of a plant, sit close behind at $101,140. Employment in all three of these occupations is projected to grow faster than the US average through 2034, which means the competition for people who already have this experience is not going to ease up on its own.
Zoom out to the plant floor and the picture gets tighter. The Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte’s joint workforce study found that US manufacturing could need as many as 3.8 million new employees by 2033, with as many as 1.9 million of those roles going unfilled if the current pace of hiring does not change. In that same research, 65% of manufacturers named attracting and retaining talent as their top business challenge, ahead of supply chain issues or capital costs. None of that is a temporary blip tied to one hiring cycle. It is a structural shortage that predates most of the ERP and automation programs manufacturers are trying to staff today.
Automation and controls engineering carries its own, sharper version of this problem. Manufacturers are pushing harder into robotics, PLC-driven production lines, and connected equipment at the same time that the engineers who can design and maintain those systems are getting harder to find. Reporting on Actalent’s workforce data found that roughly a third of engineering roles at manufacturers go unfilled every year, and that more than one in five machinery manufacturers were running below full capacity in a recent quarter because of it.
That kind of gap is exactly what turns a straightforward automation upgrade into a missed go-live date. A control systems project that assumes three engineers on staff and only has two does not move slower in a predictable way. It stalls at the exact point where the missing skill set was needed, and every week that role sits open is a week the rest of the program waits on it.
Compare the fully loaded cost of a US hire against a nearshore engineer on the same role.
Staff augmentation is a narrower commitment than it sounds. A manufacturer identifies the role, whether that is a mechanical engineer for a plant expansion, an electrical engineer for a controls retrofit, or an automation specialist for a new production line, and a nearshore partner sources, vets, and places a Latin American engineer who works under the manufacturer’s direction, on the manufacturer’s timeline, for the length of the project rather than as a permanent hire. That structure fits neatly into the same 6 to 18 month window most ERP and automation implementations already run on, and it typically costs 40 to 60% less than the fully loaded cost of hiring the equivalent role in the US, since Latin American compensation runs lower for comparable technical experience while the collaboration quality stays close to hiring domestically.
The talent pool behind this model has grown substantially. Latin America now has more than 2.6 million engineers, with the region graduating more than 220,000 STEM professionals every year from over 1,800 universities, with Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina among the largest concentrations. That is a deep enough bench to support specialized mechanical, electrical, and automation roles, not just general software development, and it comes with a real practical advantage over offshore alternatives: engineers in Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil work inside or close to US business hours, so plant teams get real-time collaboration during a controls commissioning or a plant walkthrough instead of waiting on an overnight handoff.
Automation and controls roles are worth calling out on their own, since the BLS does not track that title separately. Glassdoor’s compensation data puts the average automation controls engineer salary in the US at $131,803 a year as of June 2026, which places it above even the electrical engineer median and reflects how tightly this specific skill set is being bid up right now.
The gap between what a US-based hire costs in that lineup and what a nearshore engagement runs is a big part of why manufacturers look at this model in the first place. It also explains why time-to-fill matters as much as cost. Engineering roles average around 62 days to fill in the US, well above the general hiring average, and specialized mechanical, electrical, or automation searches can run even longer. A nearshore partner with an existing pipeline of vetted candidates can move considerably faster, because the sourcing and screening work is already done before the requisition even comes in.
Everything above points to the same conclusion: US manufacturers do not have an engineering talent problem they can solve by searching harder in the same market. They have a supply problem, and the fix is finding a deeper pool without giving up same-timezone collaboration or handing an internal HR team a sourcing project they were never staffed to run.
That is the specific gap Fast Dolphin fills. For over 20 years, we have placed Engineering staff augmentation professionals, including mechanical, electrical, and automation engineers, from Latin America into US programs, with legal entities in the US, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, and Canada that let us handle payroll, benefits, and compliance directly rather than passing that risk to the client. We can typically have a vetted shortlist of engineers in front of a hiring manager within 24 to 48 hours, and 88% of our clients come back for additional placements, which tends to be a better indicator of how an engagement actually goes than any claim we could make about it upfront.
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Nearshore mechanical, electrical, and automation engineers are generally priced well below the fully loaded cost of a US-based hire, since Latin American compensation runs lower for comparable technical roles while the collaboration quality stays close to hiring domestically. The exact gap depends on the role, seniority, and country, which is why we recommend running your specific numbers through our IT staffing calculator rather than relying on a single average.
Yes. Fast Dolphin places engineers with real manufacturing and plant experience, not only software backgrounds, and many have worked directly on ERP rollouts, controls retrofits, and production line automation before joining a US program.
The main difference is time zone overlap. Latin American engineers work in or close to US business hours, which means plant walkthroughs, controls commissioning, and daily check-ins happen live instead of over an overnight delay, and cultural alignment with US manufacturing environments tends to be closer as well.
Fast Dolphin typically delivers a vetted shortlist within 24 to 48 hours of a role being defined. Full onboarding timelines vary by role complexity and any client-specific compliance requirements, but the sourcing and vetting stage is not the bottleneck it usually is with a US-only search.
Fast Dolphin manages payroll, benefits, and compliance directly through our legal entities in each country, so the manufacturer directs the engineer’s day-to-day work without taking on the employer-of-record responsibilities themselves.
Nearshore staff augmentation engagements are typically built around the project, not a fixed headcount commitment, which gives manufacturers room to extend a placement if a program runs long or wind it down when the work is done, without the overhead of a permanent hire either way.
