Building world-class engineering teams for a next-gen air mobility company

Brief

Lilium approached us shortly after their Series B round, at a time when headcount growth was essential to keeping aircraft development on schedule. They required engineers across highly specialised disciplines including battery integration, avionics, propulsion, structural design, aerodynamics, embedded software, certification, and manufacturing.

The internal team was facing mounting pressure, with aggressive development timelines, intensive competition for aerospace talent, and earlier engagements with generalist agencies that had delivered low-quality candidate profiles and an inconsistent process.

Challenges

Lilium’s hiring environment presented a combination of systemic and market-driven challenges.

The aerospace and eVTOL sector is a skill-short market, and competition from established OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers limited available talent.

COVID-19 introduced logistical constraints, limiting travel and creating delays around interviews, assessments and onsite work, all during a period when design work could not slow down.

The nature of the Lilium Jet, which blended novel propulsion, structural innovation and complex electrical systems, meant few candidates had directly transferable experience. Many roles required a blend of R&D capability and production readiness, which narrowed the pool further.

Internally, fragmented processes slowed decision-making. Job specifications varied in quality, interview structures differed between teams, and inconsistent feedback loops risked losing strong candidates.

Lilium required a partner that could access niche engineering talent and build the structure needed for sustained, high-velocity hiring.

Approach

• We began by closing several hard-to-fill engineering roles, rebuilding confidence in external hiring and establishing early momentum across battery, powertrain and structural teams.
• We introduced structure across the process by standardising job specs, interview flows and evaluation criteria to make hiring faster and more consistent.
• A dedicated account manager coordinated all activity, streamlining communication and ensuring alignment across Lilium’s engineering, manufacturing and systems groups.
• We mapped comparable aerospace and eVTOL firms across Europe, building targeted pipelines of engineers with transferable experience in avionics, propulsion, electrical systems, aerodynamics and energy storage.
• Our consultants prequalified candidates through technical calibration calls, reducing noise in the pipeline and maintaining a very high cv-to-interview success rate.
• SLAs around feedback and scheduling were introduced to reduce delays and keep high-quality candidates engaged throughout extended multi-stage processes.
• We helped Lilium adapt hiring and onboarding to remote conditions during the pandemic, ensuring critical roles could progress without interruption.
• To support long-term scaling, we proactively sourced for upcoming roles and provided market intelligence on compensation and availability, enabling Lilium to stay competitive in a tight aerospace market.