The scale of the consultant’s current recruitment drive was revealed in its results for the year to March 31 2014.

Underlying pre-tax profit was up 7.3% to £106.4m on a turnover up 2.6% at £1,750m.

Total staff numbers dipped slightly to 17,489 from 17,899 due to the sales of the highways services business to Skanska.

But Atkins is recruiting heavily across the rest of its business as the market continues to recover.

The firm said: “Maintaining our focus on bringing more young people into the engineering sector, we welcomed 500 new graduates across the Group and accelerated our apprentice programme to attract school leavers, recruiting over 90 apprentices in the UK.”