Tech companies luring would-be spies away from GCHQ The next generation of spies and codebreakers are being lured away from jobs at GCHQ to tech companies and banks, […]

The next generation of spies and codebreakers are being lured away from jobs at GCHQ to tech companies and banks, leading to an extreme hiring shortage.

Prolonged security clearance and a rigorous vetting process is required before a potential candidate can be considered to work at the UK’s intelligence and security organisation, leaving many enticed by the high levels of pay offered by Facebook, Google and other tech companies and city firms.

GCHQ’s intelligence chiefs confirmed it has more than doubled the number of officers dedicated to vetting applicants over the past 18 months from around 50 to more than 100, according to the Financial Times.

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Candidates wishing to work at the agency are questioned over anything that could place them in “a compromising position due to conscience or undue influence”, and must prove at least one of their parents is a British citizen.

“Our vetting process has to be rigorous to protect both the applicant and the organisation, but we are also making it as swift and as straightforward as possible,” a GCHQ spokesperson told the newspaper.

The agency is aiming to increase staffing by 14 per cent over the next four years to 6,639 employees. Similarly, counter-intelligence agency MI5 wants to increase its total number of workers from 4,000 to 5,000.

Software experts stand to make significantly more money working for the likes of Amazon, Google and Facebook than from applying their skills in other industries, including spying. Graduates joining GCHQ can expect a salary starting at around £17,000, according to job site targetjobs.co.uk, while an entry-level recruit at Amazon in the UK is generally paid £75,000 with a £15,000 bonus, data from salary site emolument.com suggests.

Young tech recruits stand to benefit from generous bonus packages, and those based in London earn 60 per cent more than average across the capital, with an average salary of £56,000.

A report released last week found GCHQ had experienced a 22 per cent drop in recruitment during the fiscal year ending in 2016.

Western intelligence agencies were forced to introduce more stringent recruitment procedures in the wake of the Edward Snowden scandal, the contractor at the US National Security Agency who blew the whistle on the agency’s surveillance methods.

Robert Hannigan, former head of GCHQ, warned in August how the UK was “desperately short of engineers and computer scientists, and lacks the broad ‘cyber skills’ needed now, never mind in the next 20 years.” The country’s baseline of understanding is too low, and “often behind our competitors,” he added.