Synopsis
India’s burgeoning defence-tech alternate faces a vital shortage of evolved engineering professionals, with actually educated roles love radar, quantum, and AI expertise making up lower than 5% of the crew. This expertise crunch threatens to hinder the sphere’s expeditiously boost and its ambition to change into a world programs chief, impacting timelines for key protection programs.
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CompaniesIndia’s defence-tech alternate is grappling with an acute shortage of evolved engineering professionals, who homicide up lower than 5% of its most in vogue crew, per a notify by staffing and crew solutions firm Quess Corp released on Tuesday.
The expertise crunch comes at a time when the sphere is scaling with out discover. India’s defence technology market, valued at $7.6 billion in 2025, is projected to grow to $19 billion by 2030—rising shut to twenty% yearly—with technology-led programs anticipated to dispute almost half of of the final defence market by the live of the decade.
The notify—titled ‘India’s Defence Tech Evolution: Abilities Shaping the Next Decade’—finds that India now has 75,000-80,000 defence-tech professionals, with Bengaluru and Hyderabad alone accounting for almost 60% of this crew.
Chennai, NCR, Pune and Coimbatore are emerging because the next foremost hubs, while Lucknow, Goa and Visakhapatnam are seeing rising exercise in naval, electronics and R&D capabilities.
The field is witnessing strong momentum in independent platforms, pc imaginative and prescient, evolved sensor programs, counter-drone applied sciences, underwater robotics, directed-vitality analysis and power-led mission programs.
Better than 1,000 defence-tech startups and 194 innovation-linked companies are utilizing this surge, with 71% of entire startup funding flowing into counter-drone solutions—the fastest-rising section. The counter-drone market alone is projected to reach $1.4 billion by 2029, rising at almost 17% yearly.
But, serious engineering roles remain severely understaffed. Specialised capabilities all the plan in which via radar engineering, radio-frequency programs, avionics, propulsion, optical engineering, quantum verbal replace, programs integration, sorting out, validation and certification collectively myth for below 5% of the expertise pool.
Quantum engineering roles are especially scarce, making up lower than 1% of the crew. These shortages, the notify warns, are already affecting timelines for evolved aircraft programmes, unmanned programs constructing, naval platforms and web verbal replace networks.
In a press launch, Kapil Joshi, chief govt-IT staffing at Quess Corp, said the sphere’s greatest aggressive edge now lies in its ability to attract expertise, noting that “This day, lower than 5% of AI engineers, below 2% of cyber experts, and a within the same plan minute fragment of laborious-tech experts in areas love radar, propulsion, quantum and certification are defence-ready,” adding that scaling frontier engineering and AI expertise by five to six times will doubtless be a nationwide crucial for India to set up itself as a world programs chief.
The watch also flags that certification, security engineering and validation abilities face the sharpest shortages. With out centered skilling, 40-forty five% of such roles risk final unfilled by 2030, potentially slowing manufacturing cycles, limiting deployment readiness and affecting export competitiveness.
Despite a strong innovation pipeline—with more than 1,000 startups contributing to early-stage prototypes—the prototype-to-manufacturing conversion rate, the notify states, remains shrimp, pointing to vital challenges in scaling manufacturing capability.
