Demand is climbing fast. MOD expenditure with industry supported 272,000 direct jobs in 2023/24, an increase of 11% on the previous financial year, according to the MOD's supported employment estimates for 2023/24. That builds on momentum already in the data: MOD-supported UK jobs reached 239,000 in 2022/23, up 6% year on year, per the MOD's 2022/23 estimates.
Recruitment itself is accelerating. Surveyed recruitment in the defence sector grew by 17.8% in 2022, as reported by the Ministry of Defence. Fresh investment is adding to 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, according to a GOV.UK announcement on the defence dividend.
The cyber dimension sits right alongside this. There are approximately 143,000 individuals in the UK cyber security workforce, with growth moderately accelerating from 2% in 2022 to 5% in 2024, per the government's Cyber security skills in the UK labour market 2025 report. Secure communications draws on exactly this pool, which is why engineering and cyber hiring are now bleeding into one another.
The brief is getting broader. A defence engineer who once focused on a single product now needs to understand encryption, network security and the software that ties systems together. Secure communications sits at the join between hardware, data and cyber, so the roles that deliver it ask for more than one specialism at a time.
That makes these people hard to find. 76% of engineering employers struggle to recruit for key roles, with technical and specialist skills topping the list, according to the Institution of Engineering and Technology. The security side is just as tight: a comparison with the Cyber Security Skills 2024 report showed 70% of cyber firms reported at least one hard-to-fill vacancy, per the AI Labour Market Survey 2025. When a single role needs both, the shortlist gets thin quickly.
Start by writing the brief around outcomes, not job titles. If a role needs someone who can design hardware and reason about network security, say so plainly, and separate the skills you must have from the ones you can train. A blended role described as a single traditional title will miss the people you want.
Speed and clarity matter most. The data shows demand rising and specialists in short supply, so the employers who win are the ones who define the role sharply and reach the right people before anyone else.
This is where we help. We search 15 million candidates to surface people with the blended engineering and security skills these roles now demand, and we manage recruitment end to end so you can keep your focus on the work. 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 secure communications capability, tell us what good looks like and we'll bring you a shortlist to start from.
