The talent pool is growing, but not fast enough to meet demand. There are approximately 143,000 individuals in the UK cyber security workforce, with growth moderately accelerating from 2% in 2022 to 5% in 2024 Cyber security skills in the UK labour market 2025 - GOV.UK. That acceleration is a good sign. It tells us more people are moving into the sector and employers are investing in building capacity.
Even so, demand keeps outpacing supply at the specialist end. A comparison with the Cyber Security Skills 2024 report showed 70% of cyber firms reported at least one hard-to-fill vacancy AI Labour Market Survey 2025 (Gardiner & Theobald), GOV.UK / publishing.service.gov.uk. When most firms in a sector are wrestling with a hard-to-fill role, the question stops being whether you can post a job and becomes whether you can find the specific person who shapes the response.
Think of a security operations centre on any given day. Thousands of alerts arrive, most of them noise, a few of them real. Agents now take on that first sift: clustering alerts, flagging patterns and surfacing the handful that need a human. That changes what an analyst's day looks like. Less time clearing a queue, more time on investigation, context and the call about what happens next.
This matters for hiring because the roles are splitting into two complementary skill sets. One group builds, tunes and governs the agents that do the sifting. The other applies judgement to what the agents surface: threat intelligence, incident response, decisions under pressure. With growth accelerating from 2% in 2022 to 5% in 2024 Cyber security skills in the UK labour market 2025 - GOV.UK, the pipeline is widening, but the people who can do the shaping, not just the sifting, remain the hardest to secure.
Start by being honest about which half of the role you're filling. Automation can handle triage, so your scarcest hires are the analysts and leads who interpret, prioritise and decide. Write the job description around judgement and outcomes, not a long list of tools. When 70% of cyber firms report at least one hard-to-fill vacancy AI Labour Market Survey 2025 (Gardiner & Theobald), GOV.UK / publishing.service.gov.uk, a vague brief competing for the same small pool simply stalls.
Finally, widen the net. The workforce is growing, and that means talent is entering the sector from adjacent fields: data, software and intelligence analysis. The employers who look beyond a narrow checklist reach people the rest of the market overlooks.
We built our recruitment agent to carry the heavy lifting so you can focus on the judgement that matters, much like the analysts in your own operations. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost. If you're hiring the analysts who shape the response, tell Reed.ai the role and see your shortlist.
