Technology » Innovation Indicators » Hiring for Key Technical Skill Sets

Hiring for Key Technical Skill Sets

Increasing the share of roles focused on innovative technologies and practices is critical to finding novel solutions that accelerate environmental outcomes.

Key Insights

  • Hiring overall has been reduced drastically across agencies in our dataset in 2025. For example: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has reduced overall hiring and technologist hiring by 67% so far this year. Previously, USACE averaged 8,649 job postings per year from 2020 - 2024, with an average of 210 IT postings in that span. In the first half of 2025, the agency has posted 1,396 positions only 35 of which were for IT roles. Other agencies show similarly precipitous declines.

  • The percentage of overall hiring dedicated to technologists has dropped even more significantly than expected when looking at the overall numbers. As of Q2 2025, only 5/16 agencies in our combined dataset have IT hiring rates greater than 0.5%, most have been reduced to 0.00%. Only 2 environmental agencies have postings for any technologists: NOAA has 5 total openings, 3 for technologists and USGS has 12 total openings, 2 for technologists.

  • For the last two iterations of the Innovation Indicators, we used a custom built keyword scraper to pull job listings with technology and innovation responsibilities at environmental agencies. OPM has since restored the USAJobs API which provides access to much more granular and longer term data. The API unlocks historical data, where previously we could only surface present-day snapshots of agency actions. These data reveal that most environmental agencies were hiring technologists at a stable or slightly increasing rate between 2020 and 2024. To simultaneously reduce their technical debt and meaningfully expand their technological opportunities, they needed significantly more investment in contemporary tech talent. Instead, 2025 has seen their hiring reduced immensely, and their tech talent hiring all but eliminated.

  • Job announcements provide a strategic snapshot of the skills and projects agencies are focused on. By analyzing position descriptions, we can draw conclusions about the number, type, and seniority level of the technologists agencies are pursuing. The extent to which agencies title and phrase these jobs similarly to the private sector can also have a significant impact on the relevancy of applications received. All of those factors help us understand how much an agency prioritizes technological innovation, and how well they understand who they need to pursue it. We found very few listings for the kinds of specialized technology talent necessary to advance environmental IT infrastructures towards contemporary excellence. The pace of technological development requires organizations to consistently add new tools to their proverbial belts. Agencies must bring in top-tier technologists, as well as the many adjacent roles that make up interdisciplinary teams capable of meeting agencies’ complex mission and innovation needs—including user researchers, designers, customer experience (CX) and content strategists, data scientists, policy SMEs, and associated support staff.

Technologist Hiring at Environmental and Benchmark Agencies Plummets in 2025*

*NOAA’s Q2 2025 data were a severe outlier and have been omitted from the chart to improve readability and interpretability. They posted five roles, three of which were IT positions, for a 60% IT hiring rate. Their data are included in all analyses.

The Why

Technologists with contemporary skills are an investment in the design, deployment, and management of advanced technological systems. Those systems are urgently needed to meaningfully accelerate progress on environmental missions. We can’t learn more about the potential environmental benefits of artificial intelligence or quantum computing without experimentation by qualified technologists. Hiring new technologists is critical to:

  • Cycle the latest and greatest skills, technologies, and methodologies into government.

  • Apply fresh eyes to longstanding, systemic challenges.

The How