It's growing, and it's doing so on the back of real money and real jobs. MOD expenditure with industry supported a total of 272,000 direct jobs in 2023/24, an increase of 11% compared to the previous financial year the MOD supported employment estimates 2023/24. That builds on momentum from the year before, when the total number of MOD-supported UK jobs reached 239,000 in 2022/23, up 6% on the previous financial year the MOD supported employment estimates 2022/23.
Investment is feeding the pipeline too. More than 1,700 new jobs are being created across the UK defence sector following at least £1.4 billion in foreign direct investment committed since July 2024 a GOV.UK defence announcement. For employers, that's the headline: the work is here now, and the competition for the people to do it is rising with it.
Protecting critical infrastructure is no longer only a uniformed or classified job. It now runs through cyber defence, security engineering, operational technology, risk and resilience planning, and the data roles that sit underneath them all. Cyber sits at the centre of this shift. 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 Cyber security skills in the UK labour market 2025 report.
The pressure point is supply. A comparison with the Cyber Security Skills 2024 report showed 70% of cyber firms reported at least one hard-to-fill vacancy the AI Labour Market Survey 2025. When the same specialists protect energy grids, transport networks and data centres, that scarcity ripples straight into critical infrastructure teams.
Start with clarity. Separate what a role genuinely needs, say clearance eligibility or specific operational technology experience, from what you can train on the job. With 70% of cyber firms reporting at least one hard-to-fill vacancy the AI Labour Market Survey 2025, an over-stuffed essentials list only shrinks an already tight pool.
Speed and precision matter together. The aim is a shortlist of people who can actually do the work and clear the checks, reviewed fast enough that you don't lose them to another employer mid-process.
We built our AI recruitment agent for exactly this kind of specialist, high-stakes hiring. We search a database of 15 million candidates to surface people who match the role you describe, then rank a shortlist so you can focus on the right few rather than the many. 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 building out critical infrastructure protection teams, start your shortlist with Reed.ai today.
