The Growing Competition for Technical Talent

A ttracting and retaining talent is one of the biggest constraints facing the defence industry as a whole. From the armed forces themselves to the civil servants who carry out policy and strategic planning and the engineers who design, build and maintain platforms and systems, the workforce requirements are enormous. And with digital technologies and artificial intelligence playing an ever more central role through the advent of tech-enabled warfare, defence is now directly competing with almost every other major industry to find the right people with the right capabilities. 

To remain effective and efficient, the defence sector must modernise skills and training at the pace of technological change. 

While technology may reduce some traditional manpower requirements, the shift from platform-centric warfare to software-defined systems has created an urgent need for new expertise in areas including AI, data analytics, software development, cybersecurity and systems integration. This calls for upskilling and reskilling the existing workforce. To illustrate the magnitude of the task ahead, the EU has estimated that to meet its 2030 rearmament targets it needs to reskill 600,000 people for the defence industry.

Recruitment consultants are recommending a ‘whole-force’ approach to understanding the skills gap to enable rapid capability development with cross-industry and cross-domain training partnerships. This requires a mindset shift in defence, which historically has been hierarchical and siloed, to focus on creating a skills-based organisation.

They further call for fast-track conversion programmes to bring in engineers, software developers and data scientists that have experience working in adjacent industries such as automotive, aerospace, energy and telecommunications, encouraging mid-career transitions into the defence industry.

At the same time as reskilling existing employees, the defence industry must also be mindful of building the next-generation workforce equipped with the technical capabilities defence companies need. This will require close collaboration with technical institutes and a stronger apprenticeship system.

The UK government has estimated that 50,000 new defence jobs could be needed by the mid-2030s, while a further 29,000 workers will need to be replaced due to retirements. To help plug this yawning skills gap, last year it announced plans to create five Defence Technical Excellence Colleges (DTECs) to ensure the country’s future sovereign defence capability. 

The DTECs will work with the defence industry to co-design curricula that directly support the evolving needs of the sector and its supply chains. The aim is to develop a highly skilled workforce capable of meeting the defence industry’s long-term needs. The curricula will include a focus on next-generation technical specialisms such as aerospace engineering, digital defence technologies and advanced manufacturing. The intention is that the colleges will act as accelerated entry points for young people into defence careers.

The defence sector’s recruitment challenge is made all the more difficult as commercial technology companies are also aggressively competing for employees skilled in software, data and autonomous systems.

Tech firms generally offer better pay and more flexible working conditions, advantages that defence struggles to match. Potential defence employees also have to undergo detailed and lengthy security vetting, which can deter some candidates.

To enable defence to better compete for digital talent, recruitment consultants recommend facilitating cross-sector career pathways.
This entails creating opportunities for military employees to rotate in and out of industry, for example through secondments and assignments with suppliers.

Providing so-called zig-zag careers not only ensures the military maintains continuous exposure to the latest technology trends and innovations, but simultaneously allows the defence industry to gain deeper insights into the specific needs and challenges of the armed forces. 

In this new era defined by rapid technological change, talent development must become a collaborative endeavour across the entire defence ecosystem. The military, industry and education providers must work together to map the skills needed to maintain and develop future defence assets and to support innovation in defence-related technologies. 

There also needs to be a collective effort to modernise the defence sector’s appeal as an employer.

Young people today are increasingly motivated by a sense of purpose and ethical alignment in their careers. Military organisations must therefore reframe the narrative, emphasising their defensive role in the modern threat landscape, which extends beyond traditional warfare to include cybersecurity, robotics and the climate crisis. 

The message must be that a career in defence offers technical specialists the opportunity to work on consequential problems and apply their expertise to challenges that have real-world impact.