Engineering & Manufacturing Recruitment

Hiring for plants and engineering offices across India and the UAE, production and maintenance, quality and NPD, design and detailing, EHS, stores and supply chain, from ITI operators to plant heads.

Overview

Does Mars Consultancy recruit for Engineering & Mfg?

Mars Consultancy is an engineering and manufacturing recruitment agency, hiring for plants, job shops, EPC contractors and engineering design offices since 2015. We fill production, maintenance, quality, design, EHS, stores, purchase and supply chain roles across India and the UAE.

Manufacturing hiring goes wrong in a way office hiring does not: the mismatch is usually invisible on the CV. Two Production Engineers can both list injection moulding and one has run a 12-cavity hot-runner tool to a cycle-time target while the other has supervised a manual press. A Quality Engineer from an IATF 16949 automotive tier-1 works to PPAP, APQP and 8D discipline that simply does not exist in a general engineering job shop. We screen on the process, the machine, the material and the standard the plant actually runs to, not on the designation.

The other half of the job is geography and shift reality. In the Mumbai belt, where much of our plant hiring has been, engineering talent has been steadily pulled towards Chakan, Ranjangaon and the Pune corridor, and a candidate living in Dombivli will think hard before committing to a Taloja plant with a 7:00 am general shift start. The same holds at any plant location. Commute, shift pattern and whether the role is on company rolls or through a contractor decide more offers in this sector than CTC does, so we put all four on the table in the first conversation rather than at the offer stage.

Typical turnaround: 7–30 days
Where we've hired: India · UAE
Candidate fees: None, ever

The hard part

What makes engineering & mfg hiring difficult?

The qualification ladder is not interchangeable

ITI, diploma, BE and ME are four different hires, and plants use them for different rungs. Many shop-floor supervisor roles genuinely want a diploma holder with ten years on the line rather than a fresh BE, while design and NPD roles will not clear a diploma CV past the first screen. We confirm the qualification the plant will actually accept before sourcing, because this is the single most common reason a manufacturing shortlist is rejected unread.

Plant location loses more candidates than salary does

Plants sit where land is, not where candidates live. Taloja, Ambernath, Badlapur and Khopoli, where we have hired often, are well outside the daily commute most city candidates will accept, and a 30 to 40 percent CTC hike does not fix a three-hour round trip. We source from the local catchment first (Kalyan, Dombivli, Ulhasnagar, Panvel, Kharghar), and check commute, shift timing and relocation appetite up front rather than discovering it after the candidate has cleared the technical round.

Shift roles and general-shift roles attract different people

A rotating three-shift production or maintenance role has a materially smaller candidate pool than the same seniority on general shift, and experienced people with families often will not go back to nights. Where the role is genuinely shift-based, we say so in the first call and screen for candidates already working that pattern, which is slower to source but far more stable at the joining stage.

Sector standards decide fit more than years of experience do

Automotive tier-1, pharma engineering, oil and gas fabrication and general engineering each run to their own discipline, IATF 16949 and PPAP, GMP and validation, ASME and NDT Level II, or none at all. Someone strong in one is often unusable in another without retraining. We screen on the standards, audits and documentation a candidate has personally worked under, since that is what a plant quality head will test in the interview.

Contract and permanent workforces are hired differently

Most plants run a permanent core of engineers and supervisors alongside a large contract workforce of operators, helpers and machine attendants. These are two separate hiring problems: one is a search, the other is a throughput and joining problem. We run the permanent core one role at a time and the volume side as a volume drive, because managing both the same way fails at both.

Roles

Which engineering & mfg roles do we recruit for?

Production & operations

Production Engineer
Production Supervisor / Shift In-charge
Manufacturing Engineer
Plant Head / Works Manager
Assembly Line Supervisor
CNC / VMC Programmer & Operator
Process Engineer
Industrial Engineer, Time Study & Line Balancing

Maintenance & utilities

Maintenance Engineer, Mechanical / Electrical
Maintenance Manager
Instrumentation Engineer
Automation Engineer, PLC / SCADA / HMI
Utility Engineer, Compressors, Chillers, Boilers
Preventive Maintenance Planner
Electrical Supervisor (with Wireman / Supervisor licence)

Quality, NPD & testing

Quality Engineer / QA Engineer
QC Inspector
Quality Assurance Manager
CMM Programmer & Inspector
NPD / NPI Engineer
Welding Inspector / NDT Level II
Supplier Quality Engineer (SQA)
Calibration & Metrology Engineer

Design, R&D & projects

Design Engineer, AutoCAD / SolidWorks / CATIA / Creo
Draughtsman / Detailing Engineer
Tool & Die Designer
Mechanical Design Engineer, Sheet Metal / Machined Parts
Project Engineer
Piping / Layout Engineer
R&D Engineer, Product Development

Supply chain, stores & purchase

Purchase Engineer / Buyer
Vendor Development Engineer
Stores In-charge
Planning Engineer, PPC
Supply Chain Manager
Dispatch & Logistics Executive
SAP MM / PP End User

EHS & plant support

Safety Officer (Factories Act qualified)
EHS Manager
Environment Engineer, ETP / STP
Fire & Safety Supervisor
Plant HR / IR Executive

Use cases

What does a engineering & mfg brief usually look like?

Common shapes of requirement in this sector, and how each one is run. These are illustrative patterns rather than accounts of specific engagements.

A tier-1 auto component plant in the Taloja MIDC belt

Leadership Hiring

The brief: Production and quality engineers who have worked to IATF 16949, can read GD&T on a customer drawing, and are willing to work a rotating shift at a plant an hour outside the city.
How we run it: Mapped candidates from comparable tier-1 and tier-2 plants in the same belt rather than from general engineering job shops, screened on the process, the machine and the audits each person had personally faced, and confirmed shift willingness, and current commute before any profile went to the panel.

A plant ramping up a second line before a seasonal peak

Volume Hiring

The brief: Machine operators, assembly line helpers, quality inspectors and material handlers in numbers, to a line-commissioning deadline, with the usual volume-hiring drop between offer and joining.
How we run it: Run as a volume drive built around the local catchment (Kalyan, Dombivli, Ulhasnagar and Panvel) with drive-day coordination at or near the plant, and follow-up held right through to the joining date, which is where volume shop-floor hiring actually fails.

An engineering SME appointing its first professional plant head

Leadership Hiring

The brief: A promoter-run business moving from owner-supervised operations to a structured plant leadership role, needing someone who can build process discipline without alienating a long-serving shop floor.
How we run it: Handled as a leadership mandate: longer assessment weighted towards what the person has actually run (headcount, line count, whether they have introduced systems into a plant that had none), plus a candid read of fit with the promoter, since that is what decides these appointments.

A design office building an in-house detailing team

Leadership Hiring

The brief: Design and detailing engineers on specific CAD platforms, where the hiring manager keeps rejecting shortlists because software familiarity is being confused with real design capability.
How we run it: Reset the brief around the deliverable (what the engineer must produce unsupervised, on which platform, to which standard), then screened on the drawings and assemblies each candidate had personally owned rather than on the tool list at the top of the CV.

Track record

Where has Mars hired for engineering & mfg roles?

Across India and in the UAE. Our longest record is in the Mumbai region, and these are the belts where we have hired most for this sector. For most roles below management there, travel time decides whether an offer is accepted, so we screen for it.

Talk to the sector desk

Wagle Estate & Thane MIDC

Older engineering units, fabrication shops and corporate offices for manufacturers with plants further out.

Rabale & Turbhe (TTC Industrial Area)

Navi Mumbai's densest engineering cluster, light and medium manufacturing, electronics, packaging and precision machining.

Taloja & Kharghar

Chemical, auto component and process plants, with a catchment running through Panvel, Kalamboli and Kharghar.

Ambernath & Badlapur

Heavy engineering, fabrication and job shops, drawing candidates from Kalyan, Dombivli and Ulhasnagar.

Bhiwandi

Warehousing, logistics and dispatch operations attached to manufacturing supply chains.

Andheri MIDC & Marol

Engineering design offices, R&D teams and corporate functions for western-suburb manufacturers.

Services

How do we hire for engineering & mfg?

Volume Hiring

Operator, helper, inspector and material-handling drives for line ramp-ups and new plant commissioning.

Leadership Hiring

Plant heads, works managers, operations and quality heads, where what someone has actually run matters more than the title.

Executive Search

Manufacturing CXO and business-unit appointments, including confidential replacements at plant leadership level.

Payroll Services

Shift working, overtime and plant-level attendance, where the input stage is what actually decides whether the cycle is clean.

Background Verification

Contractor and site history a CV does not settle, plus certification checks where the qualification is the floor.

Who we hire for

What kind of engineering & mfg employers do we work with?

We hire for auto component and precision engineering manufacturers, fabrication and job shops, plastics and packaging units, electrical and electronics assemblers, process and chemical plants, capital equipment makers and engineering design offices, from single-unit promoter-run SMEs to multi-plant groups.

Discuss a requirement

FAQs

Engineering & Mfg hiring, answered

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Do you recruit for manufacturing plants and industrial estates?

Yes, across India and in the UAE, covering production, maintenance, quality, design, EHS, stores, purchase and supply chain roles. Our longest record is in the Thane, Wagle Estate, Rabale, Turbhe, Taloja, Ambernath, Badlapur and Bhiwandi industrial areas, plus engineering design offices in Andheri MIDC.

Which engineering roles do you hire for?

Production and process engineers, shift supervisors, maintenance and automation engineers, quality and NPD engineers, CMM and NDT inspectors, design and detailing engineers, planning and purchase engineers, safety officers, and plant leadership up to works manager and plant head.

Do you hire diploma and ITI candidates as well as BE engineers?

Yes. Manufacturing hiring runs across ITI trades, diploma holders, BE and ME candidates, and the right rung depends on the role rather than the plant's preference in the abstract. We confirm which qualification a client will genuinely accept before sourcing, since mismatched qualifications are the most common reason a manufacturing shortlist gets rejected.

Can you fill rotating-shift production and maintenance roles?

Yes, and we screen for it explicitly. Rotating three-shift roles have a much smaller pool than general-shift roles at the same seniority, so we target candidates already working that pattern and confirm shift willingness, commute in the first conversation rather than at offer stage.

How do you handle hiring for plants outside the city?

By sourcing from the local catchment first. For Taloja, for example, we work Panvel, Kalamboli, Kharghar and Navi Mumbai; for Ambernath and Badlapur we work Kalyan, Dombivli and Ulhasnagar. Plant location, not CTC, is what most often kills a manufacturing offer, so distance is screened before capability.

Do you understand automotive and process-industry quality standards?

Recruiters are assigned by sector, so screening is done against the standards a plant actually runs to, IATF 16949, PPAP, APQP and 8D in automotive, ASME and NDT Level II in fabrication, GMP-adjacent discipline in pharma engineering. A quality engineer strong under one standard is often not transferable to another, and that is what the screen is for.

Can you run high-volume hiring for a line ramp-up?

Yes, as a volume drive. Operators, helpers, inspectors and material handlers are sourced from the plant's local catchment with drive-day coordination near the site and follow-up held through to joining, which is the stage where volume shop-floor hiring usually loses its numbers.

How long does it take to fill an engineering role?

Typically 7–30 days from requirement briefing to a suitable candidate closing. General-shift roles in accessible locations close at the faster end; niche combinations such as a specific machine, CAD platform or certification at a distant plant take longer, because each added condition narrows an already tight pool.

Related sectors

Hiring across more than one sector?

Energy & Infrastructure

Energy & Infrastructure recruitment across India and the UAE.

IT & Technology

IT recruitment across India and the UAE.

Corporate & Support Functions

Corporate Functions recruitment across India and the UAE.

All industries we hire for

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