As commercial vehicles become increasingly complex, the demand for a highly skilled workforce has never been more necessary. Yet, immediate challenges persist when hiring specialized talent in a field that requires specialized skills.
What tools or technologies are available to help them do their job better?
How do you reskill employees in other areas of the business?
And what happens when younger talent opts for other industry roles, thus creating a hiring gap?
Mehdi Ahmadian, J. Bernard Jones Chair and Director, Virginia Tech, and moderator of the “Addressing the Skills Gaps” session, which took place during SAE International’s COMVEC 2025, calls it the Power to Evolve.
“It’s like changing the wheels on a car. The same way of thinking and culture would be brought into organizations to evolve the way we do business,” Ahmadian says.
In this roundtable discussion, panelists Harry Husted, Chief Technology Officer at BorgWarner; Zach Slaton, Assistant Chief Engineer – Electronics at PACCAR; Moiz Khan, Head of Engineering and AI Market Development at MathWorks; Thomas Tasky, Vice President of FEV.io; and Vardini Akkipeddi, Staff Electro-Mechanical Project Engineer at Allison Transmission, provide four ways to address the skills gap, meet demand and expand engineering teams.
1. Understand the trends and how to meet them.
It’s no surprise that connectivity, automation, electrification and electronics were all anyone could talk about at the COMVEC conference. But, all trends aside, how do you bring engineers up to speed on these ever-changing technologies.
First, you want to obtain a mechanically-minded approach, Tasky says, and understand the emerging trends and how they relate and impact your company. Cloud-based programs, cybersecurity, AI, EE architecture, and data science are ones to watch.
2. Partner with universities to develop continuous training programs.
Another way to address today’s skills gap is to partner with colleges and universities to develop programs that foster continuous learning and education and provide a “fast track” to get mechanical engineers ready.
BorgWarner's "Power to E-Volve" reskilling program helps prepare its workforce for the company's strategic shift toward electric vehicle (EV) technologies. This program was launched as a part of Project CHARGING FORWARD, which is expected to bring the company’s electric vehicle revenue from less than 3% of total revenues today to approximately 45% in 2030.
Today, the 13-week “Power to E-Volve" reskilling program maintains cohorts in the United States, Europe, China and India, reskilling 400-plus engineers and placing over 90% of participating engineers into roles on electric platforms.
“There’s a balancing act of identifying the great engineers that can be re-skilled vs. hiring a brand new team,” Husted says. “And partner with universities that have professional development programs in place, as they’re more prepared to partner and execute.”
For PACCAR, it’s about understanding the different skillsets by segment.
“We need to evolve our quality discipline,” Slaton says.
For example, quality disciplines are broken down into functional safety, cyber security and connectivity. Each of these disciplines requires a different skillset, a different mindset, a different user interface and a different user experience, Slaton adds.
In fact, “most problems don’t belong exclusively to one discipline,” Akkipeddi says.
She advises developing a system-based approach, upskill to focus on other disciplines, use a structure problem-solving strategy, and bring in a generalist when solving complex problems.
“Bring in the generalist for a new perspective, then the specialist for a deep dive,” she adds. “Always keep educating yourself. Continuous learning isn’t just about a degree. Learn the boundaries between the disciplines to solve the problem at hand.”
At the end of the day though, the main challenge in engineering education is that “students are only interested in real systems,” Khan says.
That’s why Mathworks partnered with the National Institute of Technology Calicut (NIT Calicut) and engineers from Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions India Private Limited (RBEI) to create a new final-year undergraduate course, Electric Vehicle System Engineering, which covers EV fundamentals (such as regenerative braking, inverter topologies, and pulse-width modulation techniques), energy storage systems, electric drive train systems, and modeling and simulation of EV systems.
“You have to enable project-based learning and teach with real-world examples,” Khan says.
3. Plan for today’s safety-critical industry.
“We live in an industry that’s safety-critical,” Ahmadian says. “How do you push staff to be more multi-faceted: mechanical vs. electrical engineers?”
To differentiate mechanical vs. electrical, Slaton says to go back upstream and choose where to implement the software to impact functional safety in the right way.
“The key though is to not overwhelm the multi-faceted approach,” he says.
For many companies, functional safety isn’t just about preventing hazards and ensuring that systems perform reliably and safely; it’s more about preparing for that what ifs, prepping for any and all possible scenarios.
That’s why it’s critical to have functional safety embedded throughout all processes and departments, Tasky says.
4. Integrating AI – how, where, when and why.
Some folks in the industry believe we’re at an inflection point with AI. It’s understood that implementing AI is a must-have for all companies in the OEM on- and off-highway space, but how do companies integrate AI in a way that complements an engineer’s skillset?
First and foremost, “make sure you understand the technology, how and where to implement it, what it does, how it’s measured but then also understand the risks that come with it,” Tasky says. “Adopt and adapt in a way that benefits your business.”
From a staffing standpoint, it’s twofold, Slaton says.
“AI is another tool in the tool chain, but it still needs to be checked by senior engineers,” he adds. “Model yourselves as leaders in the technology, give feedback and show value in how it takes the burden off of your staff.”
The other challenge is that AI and other of these emerging technologies are constantly evolving.
“It’s like a moving target,” Husted says. “How do you ensure you’re doing enough with AI to stay competitive?”
On the other hand, to successfully adopt and implement AI, companies must continue to “foster curiosity,” Akkipeddi says. “Start with small projects so you can understand where and how to apply AI and how it fills in the gaps.”
At the end of the day, AI is not a tool to replace software engineers, Khan says.
“It’s a tool to assist in them doing their jobs better,” he adds.
