How HVAC OEMs Can Scale Engineering Without Hiring More Engineers

Is this scenario too familiar? Your HVAC product roadmap is packed with next-generation designs – from smart thermostats to advanced heat pump controls – yet your engineering team is already working at full tilt.

New projects demand specialized expertise (like wireless connectivity or IoT integration), but finding and hiring additional engineers is slow and costly. This is a common scenario for HVAC OEMs. In fact, the HVAC industry today faces a shortage of skilled engineers, due in part to an aging workforce and the rapid pace of new technologies entering the field. As products become more complex and connected, OEMs are under pressure to innovate faster without overloading their existing teams or increasing budgets. So, is there a solution for HVAC OEMs to scale their engineering output?


The Need to Scale Engineering Capacity

If your in-house engineers are already stretched thin, maintaining current product lines and developing new innovations, piling on more work can jeopardize quality and schedules. Hiring more engineers might seem like the intuitive solution, but many OEMs find that it’s not as simple in practice.

The push to deliver smarter, more efficient HVAC systems has never been stronger. Trends like sustainability and IoT-enabled controls are driving up the complexity of engineering projects. Companies must incorporate sensors, connectivity, and advanced algorithms into traditionally mechanical products, all while meeting strict regulatory standards for safety and efficiency. This increasing complexity often necessitates specialized engineering expertise that may lie outside the skill set of a company’s existing team.

Why Hiring More Engineers Isn’t Always Feasible

Bringing on additional full-time engineers comes with challenges. First, there’s the time and cost: recruiting, onboarding, and training new hires is expensive, and salaries plus benefits add significant overhead. Additionally, the talent you need might be hard to find or only required for a specific project. The HVAC sector’s talent gap means the perfect specialist (for example, embedded firmware or power electronics design) may not be readily available. Even if you can hire, you may end up with idle engineers once a project ends, or skill gaps in other areas.

For many OEMs, a more agile approach is to leverage external resources effectively extending the engineering team through a trusted outsourced partner, which could be an engineering services firm or an electronics manufacturing services (EMS) provider. It is worth noting that engineering services firms focus only on design; EMS providers support both design and manufacturing services.

Leveraging an Engineering Partner as an Extension of Your Team

Instead of hiring new staff for every skill gap or surge in workload, HVAC OEMs can partner with an electronics manufacturing services (EMS) partner or an engineering services firm to augment their capacity. The concept of outsourced engineering support has been gaining popularity worldwide, allowing companies to expand their staff’s skill set by tapping external engineering expertise when the need arises. The right partner works as an extension of your engineering team enhancing the in-house capabilities rather than replacing them.

Key Benefits of Extending Your Engineering Team

Partnering with an EMS or contract engineering firm offers several clear advantages for HVAC OEMs looking to scale up their capabilities:

• Access to Specialized Expertise & Tools
  An external partner brings in-depth knowledge in areas your team may lack. Whether it’s high-frequency wireless design, compliance engineering, or advanced PCB layout, you get experts who have deep engineering experience. Engineering service providers often stay at the forefront of new design software, simulation tools, and lab equipment to remain competitive – meaning your project benefits from best-in-class technology and practices.
• Flexible Scaling on Demand
  Using an external engineering partner gives you tremendous flexibility. You can scale up quickly when there’s a surge in development work or a tight deadline and scale down when projects wind down – all without the pain of hiring or layoffs. This elasticity is ideal for project-based industries like HVAC manufacturing, where workload can spike during new product introductions or major redesigns.
• Cost Efficiency
  Cost control is a major driver, for augmenting your team with a partner. Outsourcing certain engineering tasks can significantly reduce labor and overhead costs. You pay for the expertise only when you need it, avoiding the ongoing expenses of full-time salaries, benefits, office space, and equipment for additional staff. Many EMS providers operate in regions or at scales that allow them to deliver engineering support at highly competitive rates without compromising quality. They also help you avoid costly mistakes by applying design-for-manufacturing (DFM) principles and proven processes from the start, which can prevent expensive rework or delays down the line. The bottom line is a lower total cost to get your product to market.
• Faster Time to Market
  Engaging an external team can accelerate development cycles and help hit launch dates. Your partner’s engineers are experienced in similar projects and can often hit the ground running. They bring additional bandwidth so tasks can be done in parallel, and many firms can even operate around the clock by distributing work globally. Engineering service providers also come prepared with established workflows for rapid prototyping, testing, and compliance.
• Focus on Core Competencies
  Every engineering team has its core strengths. By offloading peripheral or complementary tasks to a partner, your in-house engineers can concentrate on what they do best – be it innovative system design, proprietary technology development, or integration of the overall HVAC system. Outsourcing non-core work lets your own team devote attention to strategic projects and critical intellectual property. For example, if your competitive edge is in HVAC system architecture and performance optimization, you might let a partner handle the detailed PCB design or firmware coding for your control boards. This division of labor boosts productivity and job satisfaction; your engineers aren’t bogged down trying to do everything, and the external experts handle the rest.
• Scaling Engineering, Smarter

  Ultimately, scaling your engineering output as an HVAC OEM comes down to working smarter, not harder. In a competitive landscape, companies that can quickly adapt and execute new ideas have the edge and doing so often requires capabilities beyond what your current team can cover alone. By engaging in a capable engineering services partner, you gain the best of both worlds: the agility and expertise of an external engineering team, without the long-term burden of hiring and maintaining one.

These partnerships allow OEMs to reduce costs and improve operational efficiency while tackling increasingly complex projects. In other words, outsourcing part of your engineering is no longer just a cost-cutting tactic, it’s becoming a strategic necessity for staying innovative and responsive.

Conclusion

If you’re an HVAC OEM looking to do more with your existing engineering resources, consider partnering with an expert electronics manufacturing services provider or an engineering firm to amplify your team’s capabilities. A partner, like Avnan, can handle everything from design optimization and compliance testing to prototyping and full-scale production, all in tight collaboration with your in-house engineers. This approach lets you deliver new products and features faster, at lower cost, and without overburdening your staff.

Avnan is here to help. As a full-service EMS partner, Avnan acts as an extension of OEM engineering teams providing design engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain support under one roof. We have decades of experience helping HVAC and appliance manufacturers bring electronic controls and systems to market quickly and reliably.

Whether you’re facing a spike in development projects, experiencing a lack of specialized expertise, or needing to reduce product development costs, Avnan’s team can step in to support your goals. Reach out to Avnan today to discover how we can help scale up your engineering capacity – no new hires required.