Demand for specialist security skills keeps climbing. There are approximately 143,000 individuals in the UK cyber security workforce, with growth moderately accelerating from 2% in 2022 to 5% in 2024 the GOV.UK Cyber security skills in the UK labour market 2025 report. That acceleration tells you two things: the work is expanding, and the talent pool is being stretched to keep pace.
Biosecurity now pulls on that same pool. As threats blur across biological, digital and physical domains, security teams are asking people to understand more than one discipline at once. The result is a set of roles that did not sit neatly inside traditional structures even a few years ago.
The clearest pattern is convergence. Teams want people who can read a biological risk and connect it to the systems that detect, monitor and respond. Think biosecurity analysts, threat specialists with a life-sciences background, and risk leads who translate laboratory and supply-chain exposure into security controls.
These roles often borrow heavily from cyber. The same detection, monitoring and incident-response thinking that protects networks is being applied to biological data, research facilities and laboratory access. With a cyber workforce of around 143,000 people and growth accelerating to 5% in 2024 GOV.UK data, the competition for those transferable skills is real, and biosecurity teams are competing for them too.
Start by hiring for the overlap, not the job title. Many of the strongest applicants come from adjacent fields: cyber, life sciences, public health or physical security. Write the brief around the capabilities you need rather than a single career path, and you widen the pool without lowering the bar.
Move quickly and clearly. Specialist people have options, and a slow or vague process loses them. Be precise about clearance requirements, the mix of disciplines involved and how the role fits the wider team. Then keep the steps tight, because every extra week of delay is a chance for someone else to hire first.
Finally, treat transferable skill as an asset. Someone who understands detection and response in one domain can often learn the specifics of another. Screening for that adaptability, alongside the core technical knowledge, tends to build stronger teams than holding out for an exact match that may not exist yet.
We search a database of 15 million candidates to find people with the cross-disciplinary skills these roles demand, then manage the process end to end: sourcing, shortlisting and booking interviews. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost, through Reed.ai. Tell us the role, and we'll start building your shortlist today.
