A number of years ago I was offered a job by Shorts as a field engineer on the Tucano demonstator.
On the second interview they confirmed the salary of £10,000 to my horror, I thought I had misheard them.
A year or two later I met a Shorts tech rep who told me that if that job had been offered in house which it wasn't it would have been £17,000.
He told me it was quite simple they were looking for someone with a services pension already in the back pocket. This job was being advertised out of Scampton.
The MOD can set whatever standards it wants for the engineers employed to work on it's aircraft. If it chooses not to then the responsibility lies with them.
Where I currently work we have 12 engineers.
8 ex RAF, 2 Civvie, 1 ex Army 1 ex navy.
I suppose if any of us turned up for a job on a military unit we would all be seen as "civvies".