The defence sector is growing, and that shapes how you scope any first technical hire. 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, according to a 2025 announcement from GOV.UK. The wider base is large too: 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, GOV.UK's MOD supported employment estimates report.
Demand for the exact skills a systems engineer brings is high. IT business analysts, architects and systems designers, a group of 193,000 workers, are among the occupations in critical demand, with three out of five indicators in critical demand in 2025, the Occupations in Demand 2025 data from GOV.UK shows. Engineering as a whole is set to stay under pressure: Digital, Adult Social Care, Construction and Engineering have the greatest additional employment demand between 2025 and 2030, Skills England's assessment of priority skills to 2030 finds.
So when you scope your first systems engineer, you're hiring into a market that wants the same person you do. That makes a precise, well-argued role profile your single biggest advantage.
A first systems engineer sits at the centre of your technical delivery, so the competition for that profile matters. 76% of engineering employers struggle to recruit for key roles, with technical and specialist sustainability skills topping the list, the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) reports. That tells you the person you want is already in demand elsewhere.
The supply picture at the start of a career is also tight. In Engineering, entry-level hiring has fallen to -19% while senior hiring sits at -10%, a 9-percentage-point gap, GOV.UK's snapshot of entry-level hiring in the UK shows. For defence specifically that matters, because clearance and security requirements often rule out a purely overseas search: for the Engineering profession, the vast majority of new hires come from the resident labour force, GOV.UK's review of professionals in IT and engineering notes.
Read together, these dynamics point to one plan: target experienced, UK-based engineers, and be realistic that a junior hire will need structured support rather than instant independence.
Start with the problem, not the job title. Write down the three or four outcomes this engineer owns in year one, for example requirements definition, integration across subsystems, verification and validation, or supplier technical governance. A first hire usually spans breadth over depth, so favour proven engineering judgement over a long list of named tools.
Then build the role profile in layers. Separate the must-haves from the nice-to-haves, and be honest about which of those a strong learner could pick up on the job. Given how scarce specialist skills are, the IET's 2025 engineering skills findings suggest an overloaded essential-criteria list will shrink your pool to almost nobody.
Plan clearance early. Decide what level of security clearance the role genuinely needs on day one versus what can be sponsored after joining, and factor the timeline into your start date. Because most engineering hires come from the resident workforce, GOV.UK's IT and engineering review confirms, scope your search around people already eligible to clear.
Finally, move fast once you find the right person. In a market where 76% of engineering employers struggle to recruit for key roles, the IET reports, a slow process is how good applicants slip away.
Once your role profile is tight, the task becomes finding the handful of UK engineers who match it and reaching them before someone else does. That is where we help. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost. Ready to scope and fill your first systems engineer role? Start a search with Reed.ai today.
