You run ER&D delivery for a professional services firm. Your clients expect you to staff projects with engineers who have very specific, hard-to-find skill sets. But when your talent acquisition team posts a job description, the responses are underwhelming. Generic applicants flood in while the niche engineers you actually need never even click apply.
This is not a sourcing problem. It is a job description problem. The standard JD format was built for a world where candidates were abundant and roles were broad. In ER&D hiring, neither of those things is true. If you want to attract purple squirrels, the engineers with rare, specialized skill combinations, you need to rethink what your JD says and how it says it.
When a professional services firm hires a marketing manager or a finance lead, the talent pool is broad. Thousands of qualified candidates are actively looking, the JD follows a familiar template, and the role gets filled within a reasonable timeline. ER&D hiring operates in a completely different universe.
The engineers you need carry skill sets that sit at the intersection of multiple disciplines. You are not just looking for someone who knows embedded C. You need someone who has:
These combinations are rare. And the people who have them know they are rare, which means they are extremely selective about where they go next.
Then there is the timing problem. Client projects move fast. Statements of work get signed, and suddenly you need five niche engineers staffed within weeks.
But these engineers are not sitting in your pipeline. They are not actively job hunting. A generic JD landing in their inbox is not enough to pull them out of their current project. What works for volume hiring simply breaks down here.
A purple squirrel does not read job descriptions the way a general candidate does. They are not scanning for a role that roughly fits. They are scanning for signals that tell them this company understands their world. Most JDs fail that test in the first ten seconds.
Here is what typically goes wrong:
Niche engineers do not care about your company's revenue milestones or leadership team. They are not impressed by how many countries you operate in or how many awards you have won.
What they want to know is what technical problems they will solve on day one. Which platforms and frameworks will they work with? What stage are the projects at? Is this greenfield development or sustaining engineering? If your JD opens with two paragraphs of corporate boilerplate before even mentioning the actual work, you have already lost them. They closed the tab and moved on.
Phrases like "strong problem-solving skills," "ability to work independently," and "excellent communication" appear in every JD across every industry. From a sales role to a supply chain position to an ER&D engineer, the language is identical. To a specialist who has spent years mastering a very narrow domain, this signals that the company does not really understand what the role requires.
Some JDs ask for vague expertise like "experience in embedded systems" without specifying which protocols, platforms, or standards matter. Others go the opposite way and list 15 mandatory requirements that no single human could meet. Both approaches push niche talent away.
Senior ER&D engineers are not just looking for a paycheck. They want to know:
If your JD answers none of these questions, a purple squirrel has no reason to apply.
Fixing the job description is about fundamentally changing what you communicate and how you communicate it. Niche engineers evaluate opportunities differently than general candidates. Your JD needs to reflect that.
The first thing a purple squirrel wants to know is what they will actually work on. Not your company history. Not your client list. The problem.
Open your JD with a concise description of the engineering challenge. For example, instead of "We are a leading professional services firm with operations in 30 countries," try something like "We are building a next-generation battery management system for a European EV OEM and need an embedded engineer to own the firmware architecture from prototype through production validation."
That single sentence tells a niche engineer more than three paragraphs of corporate background ever could. It tells them the domain, the stage, the scope, and the client context. If the problem is interesting enough, they will keep reading.
Vague descriptions are the fastest way to lose a specialist's attention. "Experience with embedded systems" means nothing to someone who has spent eight years working specifically with ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers and MISRA C compliance.
Your JD should clearly call out:
If the role involves working with AUTOSAR Classic on an S32K microcontroller using Vector tools and following ISO 26262 ASIL-D processes, say exactly that. The right candidate will immediately recognize this is their world. The wrong candidate will self-select out. Both outcomes are wins.
One of the biggest mistakes in ER&D job descriptions is treating every requirement as mandatory. When you list 15 skills as must-haves, niche engineers who match 12 of them will not apply because they assume you actually mean all 15. Meanwhile, generalists who match five will apply anyway because they are used to ignoring inflated requirements.
Be ruthless about this. Identify the three to four skills that are genuinely non-negotiable for the role and label them clearly. Then create a separate section for skills that would be a bonus but are not dealbreakers.
It doesn't mean you're lowering the bar. It is about being honest so the right people feel confident applying. A specialist in power electronics who also happens to have simulation experience in MATLAB Simulink should not be scared off because your JD also lists "mandatory experience in thermal management" when that is actually something the team can cover.
Senior ER&D engineers think in terms of projects, not positions. They want to understand where the work is headed.
Instead of listing static responsibilities, paint a picture of the journey.
This matters even more in professional services, where engineers know that project continuity is never guaranteed. If you can show them a credible pipeline of interesting work beyond the immediate role, you are answering the question they care about most but rarely ask in an interview. Will I still be doing meaningful work here in 18 months?
Niche engineers want to know who they will work alongside, not who sits at the top of the hierarchy. A reporting structure diagram does nothing for someone who wants to understand whether the team has the depth to match their own expertise.
Mention the team composition. Talk about the kind of engineers already on the project. If the team includes specialists in complementary areas like systems engineering, HIL testing, or safety analysis, say so. For an ER&D engineer evaluating a new role, knowing they will collaborate with people at their level is far more compelling than knowing the company has a "flat culture" or "cross-functional teams."
"Competitive salary and attractive benefits" is not a value proposition. It is filler. Every company says it and niche engineers have learned to ignore it completely.
Think about what actually matters to a senior ER&D professional and be specific:
You do not need to list salary bands if your company policy does not allow it. But you do need to replace the vague promises with something concrete. An engineer deciding between three offers will not choose based on who wrote "excellent base salary." They will choose based on who gave them a real reason to believe the role fits their career.
Read your JD out loud. If it sounds like it was written by a legal team or auto-generated from a template, rewrite it. Niche engineers are used to reading dense technical documentation all day. The last thing they want is a job posting that reads the same way.
Keep the tone direct and conversational. Short sentences are fine. So are incomplete ones, if they make the point faster. The goal is to sound like a delivery head who actually understands the work, not like an HR system that filled in blanks on a form.
Rewriting job descriptions is a good start, but it only works when your hiring process supports speed and precision. When a niche ER&D engineer finally engages with your posting, a slow or clunky application experience will lose them. Professional services firms need a hiring engine that matches the urgency of client delivery timelines.
This is where a purpose-built ATS like RippleHire comes in.
With AI-powered candidate screening, you can quickly surface the most relevant profiles instead of manually sifting through hundreds of mismatched applications. Dynamic application forms adapt to the role, so specialized engineers are not forced through a generic process built for bulk hiring. And with built-in fraud detection and compliance frameworks, your ER&D hiring stays clean and audit-ready across geographies.
When your job descriptions speak the right language and your hiring platform moves at the right speed, niche engineers stop slipping through the cracks.
Book a demo with RippleHire to see how leading professional services firms are hiring niche ER&D talent faster.
Q: Why do standard job descriptions fail to attract niche ER&D engineers?
A: Standard job descriptions are built for volume hiring, relying on generic corporate language and broad requirements. Niche ER&D engineers—often called "purple squirrels"—are highly selective and passive candidates. They ignore JDs that lead with corporate boilerplate instead of detailing the specific technical challenges, tech stacks, and project trajectories they will be working on.
Q: What should be the primary focus of an ER&D job description? A: You must lead with the technical problem, not the company history. Open your JD with a concise description of the engineering challenge. Niche engineers want to know the specific domain, the stage of development (e.g., greenfield vs. sustaining), and the scope of the project from day one.
Q: How specific should the technical requirements be in an ER&D JD?
A: Extremely specific. Vague phrases like "experience with embedded systems" are ineffective. Instead, explicitly state the platforms, protocols (e.g., AUTOSAR Classic), microcontrollers (e.g., ARM Cortex-M), and industry standards (e.g., ISO 26262 ASIL-D) the engineer will use. This allows the right specialist to immediately recognize a fit, while unqualified candidates self-select out.
Q: Why is it a mistake to list too many "must-have" skills?
A: Treating every requirement as mandatory alienates top tier specialists. If you list 15 must-have skills, a highly qualified niche engineer who has 12 will likely not apply, assuming you require absolute perfection. Conversely, underqualified generalists will apply anyway. Be ruthless about separating your 3-4 absolute non-negotiable skills from "nice-to-have" bonuses.
Q: What benefits do senior ER&D engineers actually care about?
A: Niche engineers ignore generic filler like "competitive salary." Instead, highlight concrete, career-centric benefits. Call out access to advanced lab equipment, simulation infrastructure, opportunities to publish research, patent filing support, and clear pathways from individual contributor roles to technical leadership.
Q: How does an ATS like RippleHire help capture niche talent?
A: Even the best JD will fail if the application process is slow or clunky. RippleHire provides a purpose-built ATS with AI-powered screening to quickly surface relevant profiles. It features dynamic application forms that adapt to specialized roles, ensuring niche engineers aren't forced through a generic, frustrating process designed for bulk hiring.