The wider labour market is cautious. The Low Pay Commission describes conditions as 'low hire, low fire', with weaker recruitment, only slight increases in redundancies, and vacancies sitting below pre-pandemic levels the Low Pay Commission's 2025 report. That backdrop matters for banking and financial services, where firms are hiring for specific capability gaps rather than growing headcount across the board.
Even so, demand hasn't disappeared: it's concentrated. The largest volume increase in vacancies over August to October 2025 was in professional, scientific and technical activities, up by 5,000 the ONS vacancies bulletin for November 2025. For operational resilience teams, that points to steady competition for the analytical and technical roles that keep critical services running.
Operational resilience sits at the meeting point of risk, technology and business continuity, and the sharpest signals come from cyber security. There are roughly 143,000 people in the UK cyber security workforce, with growth accelerating from 2% in 2022 to 5% in 2024 the government's Cyber security skills in the UK labour market 2025 report. Financial services firms lean heavily on these skills to protect payment systems, customer data and critical third-party dependencies.
The catch is scarcity. A comparison in the AI Labour Market Survey found 70% of cyber firms reported at least one hard-to-fill vacancy the AI Labour Market Survey 2025. Alongside cyber, demand hotspots for specialist skills in AI, data, enterprise applications and security are shaping the market into 2026 Computer Weekly's tech recruitment outlook. Resilience leaders are competing for the same specialists as every other regulated business.
There's a supply-side warning too. UK tech graduate jobs fell by 46% in the past year, with a further 53% drop projected figures from the Institute of Student Employers reported by The Register. If firms stop building junior talent now, the specialist resilience pipeline gets thinner in a few years, not fewer.
Start by defining the capability, not the job title. Operational resilience covers risk mapping, incident response, third-party management and continuity testing, and few people hold all of it. Write the role around the outcomes you need protected, then decide which skills are essential and which you can develop in post.
Second, widen your pipeline. With 70% of cyber firms reporting hard-to-fill vacancies the AI Labour Market Survey 2025, competing on a single job board rarely works. Consider skills-based hiring and internal moves, and look at growing your own: apprenticeships have risen from 3% of AI hires in 2020 to 19% in 2025 the DSIT AI Labour Market Survey 2025, a route that also applies to resilience and risk teams.
Third, move quickly and communicate clearly. In a low-hire market the Low Pay Commission's 2025 report, the best specialists are passive and time-poor. A short, sharp process with a clear scope and fast feedback keeps them engaged when several employers are chasing the same shortlist.
We built Reed.ai to make specialist hiring faster without cutting corners. We search a database of 15 million candidates to surface people with the risk, cyber and continuity skills your resilience roles depend on, then rank a shortlist and handle the process end to end. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost. Tell us the role today and see who we surface.
