Work Highlands and Islands

Find your perfect career

The Highlands and Islands of Scotland offer a unique blend of tradition and innovation making it an extraordinary place to build a career. The region has long been celebrated for its thriving tourism, world-renowned food and drink, and rich creative industries. At the same time, those opting for careers in cutting-edge sectors including life sciences, renewable energy and space have an abundance of opportunities to chose from.

Here, you can find out about industry developments across our region, and useful signposts to some of the key employers waiting for your application to land on their desks.

*This page lists some of the key employment opportunities across the Highlands and Islands for projects we, as the economic and community development agency for the region, are involved in. It's not an exhaustive list so please check all of the usual recruitment websites too.

Life sciences

The dispersed population and unique geography of the Highlands and Islands makes it an ideal location to develop, test and trial new and innovative technologies in healthcare and health tech. The region’s ambition is for healthcare technologies to enable patients to be treated remotely if appropriate, meaning they don’t need to travel long distances to access hospital care.

LifeScan

LifeScan, one of Scotland’s largest medical technology companies, is located in Inverness, employing over 850 staff in the development and manufacturing of blood glucose monitoring devices. Producing 5 billion test strips annually, they supply global markets from their Inverness base.

Search LifeScan Careers

Inverness Campus

Inverness Campus is a world-class business location with pioneering facilities. It brings together businesses, researchers, academia and scientists providing the perfect place to collaborate and innovate.

Keep an eye on the careers pages and socials for vacancies across the campus.

European Marine Science Park

The European Marine Science Park, situated in Argyll on Scotland’s west coast, is a growing and thriving marine science community. The park is home to an established community of innovative businesses, world-class research and a skilled-talent pool. More than 100 marine scientists are permanently stationed here to better understand local marine ecology and expand the region’s scientific reputation.

See who's based at the park and links to their websites for career opportunities here.

The park has grown around the research, knowledge and facilities of the Scottish Association for Marine Science.

The Scottish Association for Marine Science

Based at the European Marine Science Park, the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) – Scotland’s oldest and largest independent marine science organisation – focuses on understanding how to build a productive and sustainable marine environment.

View careers at SAMS

Scotland’s Rural College

Located on Inverness Campus, Scotland's Rural College (SRUC) hosts researchers working to improve and maintain animal health and welfare.

View SRUC careers

Rural and Veterinary Innovation Centre

Based on Inverness Campus, the Rural and Veterinary Innovation Centre opened in June 2024. The SRUC facility is developing new links between science and industry to help address planetary health challenges and grow the natural economy.

View SRUC careers

The global transition to renewable energy is inevitable, and Scotland is right at the forefront of producing offshore wind clean energy. If you're motivated toward a net zero society, then there aren’t many better places to kickstart your journey.

Olly Minett, Marine Technical Manager, Haventus

Port of Nigg with large yellow platforms for offshore wind farm

Renewable energy

With a strong legacy in the oil and gas industry and an abundance of renewable energy resources, the Highlands and Islands is ideally placed to be at the forefront of the renewable energy industry.

Inverness and Cromarty Firth Green Freeport

Inverness and Cromarty Firth Green Freeport has been selected to become one of Scotland’s first Green Freeports. The Green Freeport aims to build a world-beating floating offshore wind manufacturing sector, creating up to 25,000 new jobs and attracting £2.6 billion in inward investment. In addition to offshore wind manufacturing, it will focus on green hydrogen and creating a new innovation cluster in life sciences.

Jobs at the Freeport will primarily focus on opportunities arising from offshore renewables and green hydrogen production, both key growth markets in Scotland. It's anticipate skilled jobs will be created in advanced manufacturing, offshore engineering and industrial support services.

You can find out more about the skills requirements on the website FAQs, and job opportunities will be highlighted here as more information becomes available.

Kishorn Port and Dry Dock

Kishorn Port and Dry Dock is a prime development location for all energy markets including off and onshore wind, manufacturing, assembly, fabrication and decommissioning. Sectors currently operating here include oil and gas, aquaculture and renewable energy.

The Port of Nigg/Nigg Energy Park

Providing turnkey solutions to the international energy sector, the Port of Nigg features 1,135 metres of deep-water quayside, mobile drilling rigs with inspection, repair and maintenance works.

Renewable jobs

The following Highlands and Islands organisations are amongst those currently recruiting for talented people in a range of renewable energy jobs.

There are great opportunities to work in the space industry in a unique and picturesque location. It's not often you get the opportunity to live and work in such a beautiful area, in particular, when you're a young, aspiring engineer building your career.

Manon Bordeau, Structures engineer, Orbex

Aerospace and space

The Highlands and Islands is fast becoming a hub of space sector activity and looks set to continue to play a vital role for years to come. Scotland’s northern geography and low population base provide the perfect conditions to launch commercial satellites into low earth polar and sun synchronous orbits.

There are currently four spaceports in the region which are undergoing development to provide launch capability in the coming years. These are:

Sutherland Spaceport at the Mhoine, Sutherland
Saxa Vord Spaceport, Unst, Shetland Islands
Spaceport 1, Scolpaig, North Uist, Western Isles
Machrihanish Air Base, Argyll

Orbex

Orbex set up a Scottish base at the Enterprise Park in Forres in 2019. It includes a rocket design and integration facility, a space mission control centre and executive offices. They are developing the Orbex Prime, an innovative new low-carbon launch vehicle that will transport small satellites into earth orbit.

View careers with Orbex

SaxaVord Spaceport

SaxaVord Spaceport is developing a launch site and ground station at Lamba Ness in Unst, Shetland. The company has secured planning permission for its launch site, which is designed for small rockets delivering payloads into low earth orbit.

Further information

Space sector developments and career opportunities

Scotland.org

Scotland.org is a partnership between Scotland's enterprise agencies, the Scottish Government, VisitScotland, Scottish Development International, Creative Scotland and Scotland Food & Drink. It brings together a wealth of information from across the public sector in Scotland supporting those who are looking to live and work in Scotland.

There's a dedicated section about finding a job, as well as further information on the key sector opportunities across Scotland.

Scotland.org

Skills Development Scotland

Skills Development Scotland (SDS) is Scotland's national skills body. They can help people build their career, employability skills and learning opportunities.

Skills for Young People - www.myworldofwork.co.uk/
Skills for Adults - careers.myworldofwork.co.uk/
Businesses - www.ourskillsforce.co.uk/

Career opportunities in Scotland

Want to know more about career opportunities in Scotland? Our partners at Scottish Development International have a wealth of information that could help you find the job you've always wanted.

Scottish Development International

There has been a block failure. Block name: caseStudyPanel - Page Id: 1 - Page Url: 2<br /><br />Exception message: One or more compilation failures occurred:
/home/site/wwwroot/Views/Shared/ContentBlocks/_caseStudyPanel.cshtml(50,45): error CS1061: 'CaseStudyPanel' does not contain a definition for 'HideLabel' and no accessible extension method 'HideLabel' accepting a first argument of type 'CaseStudyPanel' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)<br /><br />Stack trace:    at Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Razor.RuntimeCompilation.RuntimeViewCompiler.CompileAndEmit(RazorCodeDocument codeDocument, String generatedCode)
   at Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Razor.RuntimeCompilation.RuntimeViewCompiler.CompileAndEmit(String relativePath)
   at Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Razor.RuntimeCompilation.RuntimeViewCompiler.OnCacheMiss(String normalizedPath)
--- End of stack trace from previous location ---
   at Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Razor.RazorViewEngine.CreateCacheResult(HashSet`1 expirationTokens, String relativePath, Boolean isMainPage)
   at Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Razor.RazorViewEngine.LocatePageFromPath(String executingFilePath, String pagePath, Boolean isMainPage)
   at Umbraco.Cms.Web.Website.ViewEngines.ProfilingViewEngine.GetView(String executingFilePath, String viewPath, Boolean isMainPage)
   at Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.ViewFeatures.HtmlHelper.RenderPartialCoreAsync(String partialViewName, Object model, ViewDataDictionary viewData, TextWriter writer)
   at Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.ViewFeatures.HtmlHelper.PartialAsync(String partialViewName, Object model, ViewDataDictionary viewData)
   at AspNetCore.Views_Shared__ContentBlocks.ExecuteAsync() in /home/site/wwwroot/Views/Shared/_ContentBlocks.cshtml:line 25<br /><br />

Where to now?

Explore more about living, working, investing and visiting the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

Work here

Find your perfect career