How defence companies can address the engineering shortage: webinar for founders, CTOs and HR leaders on 15 October

In the first half of 2026, employers posted 6,523 defence technology vacancies on DOU — more than in the whole of 2025 (5,915). By comparison, there were 2,283 vacancies throughout 2024. The number of candidates has not increased, however: in Q1 2026, each vacancy received an average of 9.2 applications, compared with 17.8 in Q3 2023.

How companies should respond will be discussed on 15 October at a free online webinar, “Train or hire: how defence companies are addressing the engineering shortage”. It is organised by Beetroot Academy together with representatives of Lira Engineering and TAF Industries.

Where the shortage is greatest

The hardest roles to fill are in embedded systems, firmware, FPGA and RF engineering. According to Marta Khrypiak, HR Director at Lira Engineering, finding such a specialist can take three to six months or longer. To build a strong candidate pool, a recruiter may need to contact 200–400 people — two to three times more than for other roles.

Companies scaling up production and R&D must decide which skills to continue sourcing on the market and which to develop in-house. This will be the main focus of the webinar.

What the speakers will discuss

• Marta Khrypiak, Lira Engineering: the state of engineering recruitment in defence, search timelines and the resources required to fill hard-to-staff roles.
• Yevheniia Amelchenko, Head of Adaptation and Development, TAF Industries: how to onboard and train engineers within a manufacturing company, how long a new specialist needs to reach independent productivity, and how to organise knowledge transfer within a team.
• Bohdan Yarmoshchuk, Head of Sales, Beetroot Academy: training tailored to specific company needs, dedicated groups for required profiles, upskilling existing teams and assessing specialists’ skills through capstone projects. The academy will also present anonymised B2B case studies.

The speakers will also address companies without an in-house L&D function: how to organise internal training in a team of approximately 30 people without a dedicated training department.

“Defence companies are growing faster than the market can train engineers. We build programmes together with our partners, so we see exactly where new specialists’ transition to independent work is being delayed. At the webinar, we will share these insights with teams that fill such vacancies every day,” said Bohdan Yarmoshchuk of Beetroot Academy.

Event details

Date and time: 15 October, 18:00
Format: online, 90 minutes; participants can ask questions at the end
Participation: free, with prior registration
Who should attend: founders and CEOs of defence and dual-use companies, CTOs and heads of engineering, HR and operations leaders

Register

About Beetroot Academy

A Swedish-Ukrainian education company with 12 years of experience and more than 16,000 graduates. In the Defence Tech field, it develops educational programmes with defence companies, including in embedded development, computer vision, SolidWorks, drone firmware and other areas.

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