Jobs for civilians and soldiers

The Defence Forces employs professionals from a variety of fields in more than 1,000 different tasks. We value everyone’s contribution. To keep up our strong performance, we need both military and civilian personnel who know what they are doing. Changes in our society have an impact on us and our activities, showing, among other things, as an increasing number of specialist tasks.

Civilians

The Defence Forces employs over 4,500 civilians all across Finland. They are, for example, IT, technology, healthcare, administration and public affairs professionals. A half of our civilian personnel has an academic degree, and a half of them are female.
We are looking for professionals in different fields with the right attitude - conscript service or voluntary military service for women is not a requirement for civilian jobs. 

Soldiers

Military personnel work as officers, officer specialists, NCOs or contractual military personnel in different jobs all across Finland. Military personnel wear Defence Forces uniforms and use military ranks. Military duties require good physical fitness. Therefore, the recruitment process includes a 12-minute running test with a task-specific minimum score.

Officers make up about a quarter of the Defence Forces’ personnel. They work in leadership, planning and training. Job rotation and comprehensive continuing training are an integral part of an officer career. Most officers also participate in international duties. Officers are trained in the Finnish National Defence University.

The number of Officer Specialists working in the Defence Forces is about 800. They have appropriate academic qualification and work experience, and in most cases, NCO or Reserve Officer training. Officer Specialists work, for example, as ICT or technical engineers, chaplains, conductors or medical doctors.  More about Officer Specialists.

The number of Non-Commissioned Officers employed by the Defence Forces is about 3,000. They serve in the C5 branch, in logistics, maintenance and security duties, air and maritime surveillance and aircraft engineering and as military musicians. Training of NCOs focuses on instructor and supervisory duties.  More about NCOs.