Two days after the Budget, a head of IT I work with stopped me mid-call and asked who exactly would staff the new NCSC AI Cyber Security Centre of Excellence in Manchester. I told him I suspected one of his own security people was already on somebody's shortlist.
The Budget landed on the 28th October, so this is a considered look rather than a first reaction. First reactions were all totals. techUK puts the AI package at more than £700m, up from more than £600m announced over the weekend. I'd rather start with the people.
Every one of those pounds needs a person attached.
What did the Budget actually fund in AI and cyber?
The biggest slice went on AI security, where techUK's Budget analysis counts more than £415m, including £120m for the AI Security Institute, £60m for a National Cyber Shield and £70m for a National Exposure and Real-Time Vulnerability Centre. Another £140m or so goes on sovereign AI. techUK's verdict is that the Budget did no harm to the sector but offered nothing game-changing.
techUK lists the Manchester centre under AI for growth, and it is the item my client could not stop asking about.
Who is going to staff all of this?
Mostly the same people private employers are already trying to hire. A national cyber defence network, a vulnerability centre and a security institute all need senior engineers, architects and security managers. Those people already have options. But public money doesn't create more of them.
Public money adds a bidder without adding a single candidate.
And the supply side hasn't moved. techUK points out that the Budget offered little new on skills, with the government still waiting for the Milburn Review. It also lists a £3,000 Youth Jobs Grant and a £2,000 apprenticeship hiring payment for non-levy employers, which helps with juniors. But nobody is going to apprentice their way to a security architect by next spring.
Is the smaller AI money a hiring signal too?
Yes, because it spreads the demand well beyond Whitehall. techUK lists £30m for local mayoral AI partnerships, a £15m AI Challenge Prize, a £23m AI Economics Institute and a £60m AI Pathfinder Fund. Each of those needs delivery staff, often in regional bodies that may never have hired a senior technologist before. In my experience a first-time hirer will pay over the odds, which nudges salary expectations up nearby.
I've heard a version of this from more than one head of IT, where a security architect left for a public body because the second interview invite took far too long to arrive.
Does this make senior hiring harder for a mid-sized employer?
Yes, at the senior end, and I wouldn't expect it to ease soon. Public bodies can offer scale, mission and security of tenure that a mid-sized firm struggles to match. A pension, a clear remit and a ministerial launch are hard to compete with when all you have is a good team and a fair salary.
Matching on money alone rarely works, so the sensible response is to be quicker and clearer than the public body down the road.
The lower rungs may behave differently. Plenty of employers find that junior and mid-level cyber CVs arrive in volume, while the person who can own a whole programme stays scarce. The Budget doesn't change that, but it does make the scarce person scarcer, and the gap between a good offer and a fast one is where most of them are lost.
Will a weaker economy loosen the senior market?
Not at the senior cyber end, I'd say. City AM reports that the OBR has cut next year's growth forecast from 1.6% to 1% and expects unemployment to peak at 5.1%. Those are broad numbers, and they say very little about a security architect holding two offers.
But averages hide the shortage, and they always have.
Make UK argues that employing people is becoming more expensive and riskier, pointing to the Employment Rights Act and higher employer National Insurance contributions. City AM also reports that the OBR expects the Act to weigh on the economy through extra labour costs and business uncertainty. That matters because it makes every hire a bigger bet. And a bigger bet deserves a sharper process, not a slower one.
What about the people who keep the lights on?
Energy is where techUK sees the Budget's real weakness for tech. It found no short-term relief on high electricity bills, which weighs on data centre and network operators, and the freeze on the main electricity levy and the removal of Carbon Price Support only start from April the year after next. Cost pressure on infrastructure usually arrives as a hiring freeze, in my experience. Then the good engineers start listening.
That is the wrong moment to lose a platform lead, yet it is when the approaches tend to arrive.
What can an employer do about it now?
Start by deciding which two or three roles would hurt most to lose, and write down who owns each one. It sounds obvious. Most firms I speak to can name the system but not the person who would take the call at three in the morning.
Then time your own process. If it takes you longer to get a senior offer out than a public body takes to run its own, you've lost the candidate, whatever you pay. Check your bands against the market in our salary guides before you decide you can't compete.
And be honest about what you can offer that a government programme can't.
Speed, influence over the whole stack and a say in the roadmap are real advantages. But they only count if you say so early. Candidates weighing a public offer will assume the worst about a slow process.
Or worse, they will assume nothing and simply accept the first clear yes they receive. Silence reads as indifference to people who are being courted elsewhere. A two-line message after each interview, saying what happens next and when, costs you nothing and keeps the door open.
I keep coming back to that head of IT and his question about Manchester, because the honest answer is that the centre will draw on the same scarce people you are trying to keep.
If you need to hire AI security specialists while the public sector builds its own bench, our IT recruitment team can show you who is realistically available at senior level and what they are weighing up.
