How Evodia Can Help Deliver the Defence Industrial Strategy 2025 Through Strategic Recruitment

In September 2025, the UK Government published its Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS): Making Defence an Engine for Growth. The strategy lays out a vision through to 2035, setting ambitious goals for modernising procurement, strengthening innovation, developing the industrial base, boosting exports, and, centrally, improving the skills pipeline so that the UK has the workforce required to deliver the Strategic Defence Review. 

At Evodia, we see multiple ripples from the DIS that affect how the defence industry will source, attract and retain talent. Our recruitment expertise, particularly in high skill and security sensitive sectors, positions us to help defence vendors, primes, suppliers, SMEs, and government entities respond to this strategy successfully.

Key elements of the Defence Industrial Strategy 2025 that impact recruitment

Here are a few of the DIS’s provisions that have direct consequences for recruitment and workforce planning:

Skills and workforce growth & regional spread

• The strategy commits £182 million to strengthening the future skills of the workforce, including more apprenticeships and graduates in defence related disciplines. 
• There is a clear emphasis on ensuring employment opportunities across all nations and regions of the UK, not just in traditional centres. The Growth Deals will target geographic clusters. 
• Mid-career transitions are also part of the plan: people moving from other industries or sectors, needing reskilling/upskilling.

Increased demand for highly specialised roles

• With priorities like autonomy, quantum, AI, dual use technology, and advanced manufacturing, the defence sector will need people with specialised technical skills, engineering, systems design, software, sensor technologies, digital skills, R&D experience, and more.
• Also, the strategy emphasises speed (“warfighting readiness”, “procurement at wartime pace”) and resilience in supply chains. Roles in production, logistics, verification, safety, regulation, certification and so on will be in demand. 

Apprenticeships, graduates, and technical education

• The creation or expansion of Defence Technical Excellence Colleges, boosting apprentice numbers, increasing courses in defence adjacent fields. 
• More graduates, more young people entering STEM and technical pathways relevant to defence.

SME involvement, new suppliers, regional / local growth

• SMEs and start-ups are explicitly part of the plan. The MOD is looking to make it easier for UK-based businesses of all sizes to win contracts, to reduce regulatory burden, to create offsets where overseas suppliers must deliver benefit to UK industry, etc. 
• The Defence Growth Deals are designed to strengthen local supply chains, local skills, local infrastructure. 

Procurement reform and predictability

• The strategy promises a more predictable procurement pipeline, shorter and more consistent procurement cycles, better forecasting of demand. 
• Clearer signals to the market: if companies know what sort of capabilities will be required over the coming years, they can plan for hiring accordingly.

Challenges for industry in delivering on DIS

All of the above opens up enormous opportunity but also some real challenges:

• Competition for skills: Already, sectors like software engineering, AI, quantum, etc. are tight. Defence will be competing with commercial tech, automotive, aerospace, etc.
• Security requirements: Many roles in defence require security clearance or other vetting, which slows hiring and adds complexity.
• Geographic constraints: Some regions may struggle to attract certain highly specialised personnel; remote or less-urban areas often have fewer training providers or talent pools.
• Cultural fit: Defence has specific regulatory, safety, quality, and cultural demands (e.g. documentation, conformity, long product lifecycles, reliability) that some candidates may not be used to.
• Educational pipeline: Even with ambitious plans, it takes time to build courses, technical colleges etc; the lag between policy announcement and when graduates become available can stretch over many years.

How Evodia’s Recruitment Services Can Support the Strategy

Evodia is well placed to help clients in the defence sector respond effectively to these opportunities and challenges. Below are the ways in which our recruitment services align with, and can help deliver, the DIS’s aims.

DIS Objective	How Evodia Can Help
Attracting highly specialised and security cleared talent	Evodia has experience in sourcing technical, engineering, R&D, software, systems and cyber roles; we maintain networks of candidates with relevant security and regulatory experience. We help streamline the hiring process, advising clients on optimising role descriptions, vetting, clearance process, and reducing drop-off.
Supporting mid-career transitions and upskilling	We facilitate transitions from adjacent sectors (e.g. automotive, aerospace, software, electronics) by identifying transferable skills; supporting reskilling programmes; and sourcing candidates who are looking for career change.
Serving SME and regional clients	Evodia understands that SMEs often cannot offer the scale, brand, or hiring budgets of large primes. We offer bespoke recruitment solutions suited to SME scale, including contract / interim talent, flexible resource, staff augmentation. For regional players, we can help source local talent or arrange relocation or remote working where possible.
Speed and resilience	Procurement reform demands faster delivery; that implies reduced time to hire. Evodia can help by providing candidate pools ready to deploy; using agile recruitment methods; ensuring backup candidates; helping clients build internal capacity for rapid hiring / surges.

Why Partnering with Evodia Makes Strategic Sense

• Domain knowledge and sector credibility: Evodia has experience in defence, security, engineering, and regulated industries. We understand what makes a candidate viable in these sectors, from technical qualifications to regulatory / security clearance, to soft skills of working in mission-critical environments.
• Network and reach: A broad candidate network that spans graduates, mid-career professionals, contractors, regional talent. This is essential as DIS demands a wide talent base across the UK.
• Flexibility: Evodia can work with different recruitment models: permanent hires, contract / interim / consulting / project resource, and flexible staffing for surges.
• Speed and quality: By maintaining candidate readiness, agile sourcing, robust screening, we can help reduce time to hire without compromising compliance or quality, which is crucial given the strategy’s emphasis on reducing procurement/hiring delays.
• Support for SMEs: Many smaller defence firms don’t have large internal HR / recruitment functions; Evodia can provide scalable recruitment solutions that are cost-effective and tailored.
• Strategic workforce planning: Helping clients not just fill roles today, but anticipate needs, plan for growth, manage succession, prevent skills gaps.

Call to Action

The Defence Industrial Strategy 2025 represents a substantial opportunity for the UK defence sector, more funding, more contracts, more innovation, and crucially more demand for talent. But realising its vision depends on having the right people in place, in the right roles, at the right time.

If you are:

• A defence supplier planning your hiring over the next 1-5 years
• An SME or start-up needing to build technical teams quickly
• A local partner in a region preparing for a Defence Growth Deal
• A prime contractor scaling up for export or innovation programmes

Then Evodia can help. We offer tailored recruitment consultancy and delivery, from defining job profiles, through active sourcing, through onboarding.

Get in touch with Evodia to talk about how we can support your hiring strategy in line with the Defence Industrial Strategy, helping your business grow, delivering for MOD, and contributing to a secure and prosperous UK defence industrial base.

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