Last year, Helsing roughly doubled its team to several hundred employees, according to Sifted. The Munich-based AI defence company is one of dozens of European defence technology companies scaling fast as governments increase spending.
In 2025, NATO's European members spent $574 billion on defence, a 20 per cent increase in real terms over the previous year. That money is flowing into companies building drones, AI systems, satellite intelligence platforms and autonomous ground vehicles. Many of them need the same people as any fast-growing tech company: software engineers, product managers, operations leads and business developers.
DefenceJobs tracks more than 430 of these companies across 31 European countries. Most are not the defence primes you might picture. They are startups and scale-ups, often fewer than 200 people, building technology with both commercial and military applications.
Who is hiring and what they actually need
The breadth of European defence tech is wider than it looks from the outside. Helsing is one example, but it is far from alone. STARK Defence, a German drone manufacturer founded in 2024, grew its headcount by 3,900 per cent over the past year according to Sifted, expanding from a founding team into a company with several hundred staff. ICEYE, a Finnish-Polish SAR satellite company, and Milrem Robotics, an Estonian maker of autonomous ground vehicles, are also scaling their teams.
These companies are not only hiring weapons engineers. They need full-stack developers, backend engineers, DevOps specialists, data scientists, product managers, programme managers, finance leads and HR professionals. Isar Aerospace, a German launch vehicle startup, recruits mechanical engineers alongside software developers. ARX Robotics, which builds unmanned ground systems in Munich, hires across engineering and operations. The roles read much like those at any Series B or C tech company.
Browse the full range of open positions on DefenceJobs or explore companies by sector and country on our interactive European defence tech map.
The clearance question
Clearance requirements vary enormously depending on how close a company works to classified government programmes. A startup building encrypted hardware for a ministry of defence will almost certainly need cleared engineers. A cybersecurity SaaS company selling to both banks and military customers probably will not, at least not for most of its team. The spectrum is wide, and most of the European defence tech sector sits closer to the commercial end than people assume.
Companies building products with both civilian and military applications, which describes a large share of the startups on DefenceJobs, often have entire engineering teams that never touch classified material. For roles that do require clearance, the employer typically sponsors the process. In Germany, a basic security check (SU1) takes a few weeks. More thorough vetting (SU2 or SU3) can take several months but is initiated by the company, not the candidate.
The practical advice: do not self-screen. If a job listing requires active clearance, it will say so. If it does not mention clearance, assume it is either not needed or the company will handle it.
The European Commission has recognised clearance requirements as a barrier to labour mobility in defence and is exploring measures to reduce friction, including an EU Defence Industry Talent Platform with traineeships at SMEs and startups.
Where the work is and how to think about location
If you are considering relocation, the question is not just "which country has defence companies" but whether a city has enough of them to support a career. Moving to a place with one interesting startup is a bet on that single company. Moving to a genuine hub means that if things do not work out, or if you want to grow, you can switch employers without switching cities. You can also network, attend industry events and learn from people at neighbouring companies.
Munich is the strongest example. Helsing, Quantum Systems, ARX Robotics, STARK Defence and Isar Aerospace all operate there. An engineer who joins one of these companies and later wants a change has four or five realistic options within the same city. That is rare in European defence tech. Filter Munich and German roles on DefenceJobs.
London has a deep defence-industrial base and a growing startup scene in autonomy, electronic warfare and cyber. Bristol and Edinburgh are secondary clusters. The UK ecosystem is large enough to build a full career in.
Paris and Toulouse anchor France's aerospace and defence tech ecosystem, backed by 68.5 billion euros in defence spending for 2026 (2.25 per cent of GDP).
Tallinn is smaller but remarkably dense. Milrem Robotics, Frankenburg Technologies, Cybernetica and several other defence tech companies operate in a city of 450,000 people. Estonia's government is an enthusiastic early customer, which helps startups win their first contracts. Finland has ICEYE and a cluster of sensor and communications companies. Sweden has a long tradition of defence innovation.
The Netherlands, hosting NATO's innovation accelerator DIANA, is growing as a hub with companies like DeltaQuad and Intelic.
Remote work exists but is less common than in commercial software. Security requirements, export controls and on-site testing mean most roles are hybrid at best. If location flexibility matters, look for companies building software products rather than hardware.
What makes it different from commercial tech
The learning curve is steep, and that is part of the appeal. Defence technology sits at the frontier of several hard engineering problems: real-time autonomous systems operating in contested environments, sensor fusion across multiple data sources, hardened communications that work when infrastructure fails. Companies are shipping products that need to function under conditions most commercial software never encounters. Engineers who want to work on genuinely difficult problems, and come out stronger for it, tend to find defence tech more rewarding than another optimisation pass on an ad-serving pipeline.
Government procurement moves slowly compared to commercial sales. Contracts can take years to close. But they tend to be large, multi-year and sticky, which gives engineering teams stability to work on ambitious projects without the quarterly pressure of consumer metrics.
The financial trajectory also runs counter to commercial tech. While the wider industry has seen layoffs and funding contractions since 2022, European defence is moving the other way. NATO allies collectively spent 20 per cent more in 2025 than in 2024. The new target of 3.5 per cent of GDP by 2035 means this trajectory is set for a decade. Investment in European defence tech startups grew more than 500 per cent between 2021 and 2024 compared to the prior three years, according to McKinsey.
Competition for roles is also lower than in commercial tech. Many experienced engineers never consider defence. That means less competition for strong candidates, particularly those with AI, robotics or systems engineering backgrounds. Equity compensation at early-stage defence companies can also be meaningful if the sector continues to grow.
How to actually get hired
Apply directly. These companies are small. Your CV gets read by a human, often the hiring manager. You do not need a referral to get noticed, though it helps.
Do not filter yourself on industry experience. Defence tech companies are mostly hiring from commercial tech. They want people who have built products, shipped code and managed teams. Domain knowledge can be learned. Engineering ability cannot.
Understand the mission. Defence tech founders and hiring managers care that you have thought about why you want to work in this space. Read the company's website, understand what they build and for whom. A sentence in your cover letter about why their mission matters to you will set you apart from candidates who are just sending applications broadly.
Use specialist job boards. General platforms bury defence tech roles under thousands of commercial listings. DefenceJobs indexes roles specifically from European defence technology companies, making it easier to find relevant openings and discover companies you might not have heard of.
Look at the map. Our company directory covers more than 430 companies across 31 countries with an interactive map. Filter by country, sector or company size to find companies you would never encounter on LinkedIn or Indeed.
