Five “schools” riding the same bicycle: how different cultures collide in Defence tech

This op-ed by CORE Team founder Anna Korol opens a new special project by Defender Media exploring recruitment in the defence business. On one hand, the sector faces an enormous talent shortage. On the other, there is a huge amount of industry-specific complexity, security concerns, and operational risks that slow down and complicate hiring. Throughout the summer, we will examine the realities of recruitment in defence tech and share practical cases and advice. Background checks, hiring veterans, engineers, and young specialists — leading experts will explain how to approach these challenges.

In the first article of the series, Anna Korol looks at the different cultures colliding inside Defence tech — and how they can learn to understand one another.

There are no accidental people in the defence industry. Not among candidates, and not among founders. Everyone came here from another life, driven by the goal of Ukraine’s victory. And each of those previous lives taught them to make decisions about teams in very different ways. For some, execution discipline comes first. For others, it is the hiring funnel. And for some, it is all about processes and five-year planning horizons.

That is why, when a Ukrainian Defence tech company sits down to decide whom to hire, what often collides is not arguments but entire management worldviews brought into the hiring process. And right now, this is the most expensive conversation on the market.

A startup cubed

In an IT startup, you build the bicycle while riding it. In Defence tech, things are even “more fun”. You build it while it is on fire — and it is not just one bicycle, but an entire production line of them, because the country is defending itself here and now.

The numbers show the scale of these “fun” challenges. According to estimates by KSE, Brave1, and Defence Builder, Ukraine’s defence technology market reached $6.8 billion in 2025. According to Brave1, more than 1,500 Ukrainian defence tech startups had joined the platform as of 2025. Around 90% of them have been operating for more than four years, yet most still employ only 50–250 people. At the same time, both the market and the companies themselves continue to scale rapidly. In our research with the Ukrainian Council of Defence Industry, all 27 surveyed companies said they planned to expand, while 25 out of 27 had open vacancies at the time of the survey.

What exactly is startup-like about it? Everything.

The industry itself, because nobody has written the rules of the game yet. Every individual company, because its structure is rewritten every quarter. Every internal team, because people come from five entirely different donor sectors — or “schools”, as I call them — and in many cases they are not simply changing employers, but entering an entirely new industry: Defence tech. Which means learning everything again from scratch.

As a result, we are dealing with three layers of uncertainty simultaneously. And that is only the external part of the challenge.

Five “schools” of hiring at one table

Now for the most interesting part: who is building that burning bicycle?

Defence tech companies bring together people with fundamentally different management backgrounds. Each comes with their own professional experience, deep expertise in their original industry, their own instincts, and their own approach to making decisions about people. I have identified five main “schools” of hiring — depending on the industry a manager comes from — that I constantly see among our clients.

IT. This group is characterised by systematic recruiting, strong expertise in building compelling EVPs, competition for individual talent, and flexible compensation models. What often requires adaptation is the speed of making difficult people decisions — especially when someone has to be told: “it did not work out”.

Military-related backgrounds (former service members, veterans). For them, recruitment is first and foremost about mission above all else, clear hierarchy, execution discipline, and loyalty as a core value. What they need to consider in order to hire effectively is adapting to the logic of the civilian market: compensation expectations and “soft” HR tools such as employer branding, which are perceived very differently in military environments.

Manufacturing. People from this background are usually focused on long-term planning horizons, process discipline, and growing talent internally. What they need to be prepared for is adapting to the pace and expectations of tech candidates, who are used to much faster decisions. By the time a manufacturing-style hiring process reaches a conclusion, the candidate has often already accepted another offer.

Investment funds. This category views every hire as a line in unit economics — an expense that must be justified and a component of the product’s economics. Decisions are heavily data-driven, with a focus on rapid scaling. The main risk here is mechanically transferring patterns from portfolio tech startups into Defence tech, where things work differently.

Other sectors (aviation, automotive, logistics). These industries tend to prioritise process reliability and proven expertise, although each has its own specifics. Their common challenge is that the tech environment can feel chaotic until they become accustomed to it, which means companies should account for a significant adaptation period from the outset.

When these five “schools” — or five leaders from different industries — sit down together inside one company to align on hiring decisions, they are not debating facts. They are debating worldviews. And this is not something resolved in a single strategy session over coffee.

Where it actually shows up

These clashes of cultures and worldviews rarely explode into one major conflict. Instead, they quietly surface through dozens of small decisions. In Defence tech hiring, misunderstandings usually emerge around several key areas:

• The profile of the ideal candidate. Everyone describes the ideal candidate from the perspective of their own background. The result is often a mythical creature that does not exist in real life.
• Compensation philosophy. Different “schools” interpret the same salary very differently: IT sees it as market standard, military leaders may see it as excessive, investors view it as a cost to minimise, while manufacturing leaders prefer to postpone or stretch such expenses over time.
• Interview evaluation criteria. “Discipline and loyalty” vs “skills and autonomy” vs “reliability and years of experience”. Which matters most when hiring?
• Decision-making speed. An IT candidate expects an offer within a week. Manufacturing-style approval cycles take a month. By that point, the candidate has already joined another company.
• EVP alignment. Every “school” pulls the narrative towards what matters most to them: mission, technology, money, or career growth. If the EVP is not aligned from the start, the candidate hears four different versions from four different interviewers within the same company — and ultimately trusts none of them fully.

If these contradictions are never openly acknowledged and aligned, they quietly consume months and millions.

The management trap almost everyone falls into

The CEO realises that hiring talent in Defence tech is complicated and does what seems logical at first glance: delegates recruitment to HR. And often, along with execution, ownership of the process gets delegated as well. “You are the professional — you figure it out.”

That is precisely the mistake that costs the most.

HR can manage the funnel, screening, and coordination brilliantly. But HR does not have the authority to align the competing worldviews of the five “schools” sitting at the table. That is neither their job nor their mandate.

What should the CEO do instead?

First, retain ownership of hiring. Delegate execution, not ownership. In other words, decisions about what kind of specialist the company needs, which skills are critical for a role, what trade-offs are acceptable, and what deviations from the standard compensation package are possible — all of this must remain with the CEO. HR, or an external recruiting partner, can then execute those decisions.

Second, align on the candidate profile at the beginning of the search, not during the final interview stage when two stakeholders are already “for” and two are “against”.

Third, create shared evaluation criteria where each of the five schools contributes its own perspective instead of blocking the others.

Fourth, play the role of a “translator” between cultures. Not an arbitrator deciding who is right, but someone who helps all five schools genuinely hear one another.

It sounds simple. In practice, it is one of the hardest parts of a CEO’s job in Defence tech. But it is also what determines whether your burning bicycle gets anywhere at all.

So what do we do about it?

The good news is that cultural diversity around the table is not a bug — it is potentially one of Defence tech’s greatest strengths. The combination of IT, military, manufacturing, investment, and other sectors creates a kind of combined intelligence that simply does not exist in “pure” industries. But it only works when managed consciously.

The management conclusion is straightforward: hiring in Defence tech does not begin with a vacancy. It begins the moment the CEO understands who exactly they are bringing to the table — and why. Everything else — funnels, screening, offers — is simply a consequence of that understanding.

In the next instalments of the Arming with Talents series, we will break down the tools one by one: candidate screening, working with veterans, hiring young specialists, building international talent pools, and the typical management mistakes that send companies right back to square one.

The burning bicycle is not going anywhere. The only question is who is riding it — and how well they can agree with one another.

Anna Korol

CEO & Founder of CORE Team

• LinkedIn