4
INTRO
San Antonio is experiencing a period of transformational growth. With
an estimated 66 new residents per day and growing, this community
expects to add an over 1 million residents by 2040. The secret is out.
San Antonio is a competitive city for business investment that boasts
a growing workforce and high quality of life that appeals to young
professionals, families and military alike. To ensure San Antonio’s
continued economic prosperity through this transformational growth
period, it is up to San Antonio public, private, education and workforce
development leaders to work together to build a sustainable, skilled
workforce pipeline for San Antonio.
SA Works, the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation’s
(SAEDF) workforce development team, is an industry-led program
aligning San Antonio’s education providers and private sector to
promote economic mobility. SA Works’ goal is to reduce the skills
gap in target industries by producing the needed skills from local
education and training programs to create a robust workforce
pipeline. The community’s rst IT and Cybersecurity Demand
Occupation and Education Report studies San Antonio’s IT and
cybersecurity industry, its education providers, and the largest hiring
employers to better understand potential skills gaps and serve as a
catalyst for alignment in education and industry before these skills
gaps worsen. As communities across the US are working to address
these challenges, San Antonio’s unique ability to collaborate across
sectors allows this community to address these potential issues
head on.
IT and Cybersecurity were prioritized for this report, ahead of
other target industries that include manufacturing and bioscience,
because cybersecurity and IT presents the greatest opportunity
for San Antonio to become a global industry leader. The IT and
Cybersecurity industry is growing and attracting global employers
like EY, PwC, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin and The Hut
Group to grow tech operations in San Antonio. The community can
continue this momentum by ensuring we are not only an attractive
city for tech talent to move to, but that we are a city producing our
own, homegrown tech talent.
San Antonio’s local institutions of higher education are making
critical investments in capacity for programs related to high-tech
careers in Information Technology, Cybersecurity, and Data Science.
Approximately $200M in funding from the University of Texas Board of
Regents, private donations, and contributions from the State of Texas,
Bexar County, and the City of San Antonio will help the University of
Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) expand its urban campus in the heart of
San Antonio’s downtown, a National Security Collaboration Center
and School of Data Science will directly supply top talent to the local
cybersecurity and technology industries.
While higher education institutions continue to adapt to the changing
environment and grow, technology jobs continue to evolve, and
do not necessarily require a degree, extensive experience, or skills
in computer science, programming knowledge, or coding skills to
launch a successful career in technology. Demand for professionals in
cybersecurity continue to outpace the supply of skilled workers and
those with 2-year degrees and industry acknowledged certicates are
able to launch IT and Cybersecurity careers and further bolstering the
workforce pipeline.
In this emerging and broadening profession, demand is rising for
both highly skilled specialists with technical skill sets, as well as the
business-oriented individual who brings operational excellence
and bottom line business results to a wide spectrum of elements
that compose an organization’s information technology and cyber
security needs.
Opportunities to join the workforce in IT and cybersecurity are
available and are becoming increasingly dependent on a widening
range of occupational skills, experience levels, and backgrounds.
In addition to a broad spectrum of technical and professional skills,
in which the most in demand skills will be featured in this report,
essential skills, or “soft skills” have been identied as critical with
the understanding that new employees can rapidly acquire technical
skills as they gain experience.
This report highlights the occupations in highest demand in
San Antonio, as well as the skills and qualications required
to compete for these jobs, based on primary employer data and
reputable data sources. In each occupation featured, the report also
highlights some of the most visible elements of cybersecurity practice
across high tech jobs that are in demand in the San Antonio region.
Bridging the gap between demand and San Antonio’s supply, this
report also provides an asset map of the education providers in
San Antonio focused on these demand occupations. The goal is
to provide a useful resource for career explorers, individuals who
are new to the eld and still planning their career, someone who is
planning a career change, or the seasoned professional looking to
reskill or upskill as part of the next step on their career journey.
Mapping local education providers in alignment with high demand
occupations provides a catalytic opportunity to work collaboratively
across the community to identify gaps and work collectively to
bridge those gaps. With intentional partnerships and alignment
between industry and education providers to address our workforce
challenges, San Antonio is well positioned to build upon its
reputation as a leading destination for relocation and expansions as
well as a place to call home and build a successful career.
We welcome your feedback on this report and hope to continue
the dialogue on San Antonio’s highest demand occupations.
Together, San Antonio is addressing its workforce needs today
while preparing for the growing workforce demand in its IT and
Cybersecurity industry.