Reservist to Defence Engineer: Defence Career Pathways
30 Sept, 2026
The people defence need are already here.
Every defence leader I speak to has the same worry. Not budget. Not technology. People.
The investment is landing. The programmes are won or close to won. The question is who's going to deliver it all.
At DVD2026, I joined Angela Owen, founder of Women in Defence UK, on a panel titled “Finding Talent in Unexpected Places”. You can watch the full session here. Angela asked whether defence is short of talent or short of skills.
My answer was simple. Neither.
We're short of people opportunities.
It's not the people. It's the doors.
Look at early careers. The big primes run some of the largest intake programmes in the country, and they're heavily oversubscribed. In my experience, only a fraction of applicants secure a place.
Everyone else wanted in. The sector just didn't make room for them.
So I see it like this. Defence needs talent. Talent is people plus skills. Give capable people the skills, and the picture changes completely.
The talent isn't missing. It's waiting for opportunity.
More investment. Same pool.
Money is flowing into defence. Primes are under pressure to deliver. Start-ups are scaling fast. And every announcement comes with the same promise: jobs.
It's true. Investment creates jobs.
But look closely at those jobs. Most are written for people who have already done them. So the talent pool doesn't grow. The competition for it just gets tougher. People move between competitors, costs rise, and programmes still wait.
I get why it happens. Programme leaders and recognised for delivering on time and to budget. When your success is measured on delivery, a hiring someone who doesn’t tick every box feels like an unsafe choice.
Here's the thing. It isn't safe.
I know of one organisation that has been trying to fill the same role for five years. Five years. That's not caution. That's risk, hiding in plain sight.
Uncertainty hasn't helped. While the sector waited for the Strategic Defence Review and the Defence Investment Plan, many organisations paused hiring, and early careers intake dipped.
Defence doesn't hire in a bubble. We compete with many other sectors and major infrastructure programmes; Planned investment in the North Sea with Jackdaw and Rosebank are claimed to be great for the economy (that’s on for another article to discuss!). They will raise huge competition for talent, especially for shipbuilding skills.
The UK's biggest infrastructure programmes draw from the same pool.
The executives I speak to know talent is one of their biggest strategic risks. Yet the workforce plan and talent strategy often sits far too low on the to do list.
That needs to flip. Because hiring people with adjacent skills and potential takes time to mature. And time is the one thing delivery pressure keeps taking away.
Meet the fifth route.
Most organisations resource through four routes. Early careers. Senior hires from competitors. Subcontracting. Contractors.
Keep all four. They work.
But there's a fifth route that deserves far more attention: career pivoters.
Career pivoters don't match your job spec word for word. They bring the skills, behaviours and curiosity to grow into it. Once you start looking, you see them everywhere.
- Armed Forces leavers. Leaders under pressure. Problem solvers by training. Often unsure how their experience translates into an industry job title.
- PhD graduates. Too experienced for a graduate scheme, too new for a senior role. Some end up working far below their ability while they wait for a door to open.
- Engineers from sectors in transition. Industries like automotive are changing fast. The skills are still there, and defence needs them now.
- Military families. A community that organisations like Recruit for Spouses and With You, With Me know well. Resilient. Organised. Brilliant at delivery. Often without a certificate to prove it.
What makes career pivoters powerful is simple. They've already had a career. They know how work works.
In our experience, they reach full productivity faster than people entering through early careers. That's not a criticism of early careers. We all started somewhere. It's just a sweet spot most organisations walk straight past.
Talent, found in unexpected places.
The best stories from the session all started with the same question.
Not "what experience do we need?", but, "What skills do we need?".
Angela shared the story of a cable manufacturer, SMI that realised the work demanded exceptional hand dexterity. So they didn't ask for manufacturing experience. They asked candidates who were good at crocheting to apply.
Applications rose. Many more women applied. And the company found exactly the skills it needed.
She also shared how GCHQ found one of its best recruits at a summer camp. A hairdresser.
I told a similar story about Babcock. Its welding team in Plymouth had very low gender diversity and couldn't find welders. So, the team looked again at what the job really needed. Steady hands. A high attention to detail. The same qualities you'd want in the person cutting your hair.
Babcock went looking for hairdressers. It improved its gender diversity and solved its hiring challenge.
The lesson isn't complicated. Some people are ready on day one. Others need a bridge. Training. Development. Time.
But you'll never meet any of them if your job advert shuts them out.
As Angela said on the day, too many adverts are just the one that hired the last person, pulled out of the drawer and posted again. Ten years' experience. One exact qualification. Nothing human about it.
Capable people read that and quietly rule themselves out.
LEAP. Potential, built in.
This is why we co-built the LEAP programme.
Systems engineering is the perfect example. Employers have struggled to find systems engineers for years. The demand is real.
But so is the talent. It just needs a bridge.
LEAP was developed by a partnership of Matchtech, the School of Systems Engineering (SOSE) and Innexia. Each partner brings something different.
Matchtech engage and assess the best people.
SOSE delivers applied technical engineering training.
Innexia builds the soft skills that help new recruits advance into a new working culture.
Trainees are paid while they learn. They're supported by mentors and a strong peer community throughout, with a clear pathway to a permanent role.
And we recruit for behaviours first. Hungry to learn. Analytical and methodical. Curious. Open-minded.
The first recruits started as trainee systems engineers at Leonardo sites in Bristol, Southampton and Luton. I've watched people who would never have made a traditional shortlist become systems engineers.
That's the difference between screening people out and building people up.
For me, it's personal. My father served in the Armed Forces. I've seen how much service leavers bring when someone gives them the chance.
For employers. Five small shifts. A much bigger pool.
You don't need to rip up your hiring strategy. Just build on it.
Plan for future talent, not only early careers. Keep your graduate and apprentice schemes. Add career pivoters to your workforce plan as a deliberate route.
Start where the pressure is. Find your most critical roles, then ask which backgrounds and behaviours could transfer into them.
Hire for skills and behaviours. Write adverts around what the role needs, not what the last person had. Make them flexible by default where the role allows. Not every job can be. Many more can than are today.
Build the bridge. Work with training partners and programmes like LEAP, so people who aren't quite ready on day one get there quickly.
Put people on the board agenda. If they're one of your biggest delivery risks, the plan to find them deserves the same attention as the programme itself.
Government and the MOD can help too. Clearer, more consistent visibility of funding gives organisations the confidence to hire on potential rather than wait for certainty.
For career pivoters. Your skills already speak defence.
Leaving the Armed Forces? Finishing a PhD? Working in an industry that's changing under your feet?
Don't rule yourself out because your CV doesn't match a job title.
Defence needs problem solvers. Leading teams under pressure. Untangling complex problems. Delivering when it counts. You've already done the hard part.
What you might need is a bridge. That's what LEAP is for. And it's what our defence team does every day.
Where to go next.
Explore LEAP. See how the programme works on the LEAP programme page, or read more on the Matchtech blog.
Talk to me. Hiring, or thinking about a pivot? Get in touch at Aidan.Wood@matchtech.com.
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