Skills, Talent and Diversity updates
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Unlocking Potential: Creating New Pathways into Tech Careers
As demand grows across intelligent technology engineering - particularly in fire, emergency, safety, and security roles - the industry continues to face significant skills shortages. Yet many still assume there is only one “right” way into a tech career. Meeting the sector’s future needs will require broader, more supportive pathways that help people with the right mindset and potential to build careers over time, regardless of where they start.
The Challenge
Too often, potentially talented individuals are held back not by capability, but by assumptions about what a “tech career” looks like.
This is reflected across the industry. In its 2026 Security Industry Trends Report, Gallagher Security found that staffing and skills shortages are now the top challenge for security channel partners (24%) and remain a significant concern for end users. Recent analysis from the Institution of Engineering and Technology further highlights the scale of the challenge, showing that demand for engineering roles far outstrips the number of people entering the profession through traditional routes.
Against this backdrop, widening the pool of who we consider “right” for a technical role is no longer a nice to have; it’s a necessity.
Rethinking Career Development
The most effective development happens on the job. Learning in real work environments, with structured mentoring and clear milestones, allows people to gain experience, take responsibility, and build confidence in ways classroom training alone cannot. Early responsibility, supported by experienced colleagues, demystifies technical roles and replaces uncertainty with clarity. Clear stages make progression visible, motivating participants and reducing the subjectivity that can make career paths feel unfair.
Advance@North: A Practical Response
Advance@North was designed to address these challenges directly. It provides a structured pathway into technical roles for people who already have work experience and may be changing direction or building skills gained elsewhere.
At its heart, Advance@North blends real-world learning, supervised site experience, dedicated mentoring, and clear development milestones. Participants learn alongside qualified engineers, gradually taking on responsibility as their competence grows. Regular check-ins ensure people understand what they are learning, what “good” looks like at each stage, and how they are progressing. This structure gives clarity and confidence in a way that purely ad-hoc learning cannot.
Creating and delivering Advance@North has been a genuine team effort. The programme has been shaped with input from our Engineering team in developing the curriculum, alongside the time, commitment and support of mentors who guide participants through their day-to-day learning.
The programme began as a small pilot in mid-2025 with two colleagues, one of whom has since progressed into a junior engineer role. Five further participants have joined between September 2025 and January 2026, demonstrating both growing confidence in the model and clear demand for a different type of entry point into engineering pathways.
Participants come from varied backgrounds. One joined North after completing an apprenticeship in a completely different trade and later working outside the industry, describing how learning “what happens behind the scenes of keeping premises secure” opened a new understanding of technical work. Another entered the programme after a long career in the Armed Forces, followed by retraining and difficulty finding opportunities due to a lack of direct experience, seeing Advance@North as a chance to build competence while working as part of a supportive team.
What links these stories is not a shared CV, but a shared mindset: willingness to learn, adaptability, and commitment. Clear stages, mentoring, and visible milestones give participants confidence about their development and the route towards becoming fully competent engineers.
Ultimately, Advance@North prepares people for roles such as maintenance and installation engineers, giving them both the experience and the structured support needed to progress into full engineering status over time.
Looking Forward
As we participate in initiatives like techUK’s TechTogether, the focus should be on broadening access and redefining what a tech career can look like. Programmes like Advance@North show that with clear structure, practical learning, and an emphasis on potential, careers in tech don’t have to follow a single, traditional route.
The challenge for employers is not simply to fill vacancies, but to design pathways that give people clarity, confidence, and opportunity. When we widen the definition of who belongs in technical roles, we don’t lower standards - we strengthen the future of the industry as a whole.
About the campaign
techUK’s TechTogether campaign, taking place throughout March, is a collection of activities highlighting the UK’s technology sector pursuit to shape a more equitable future. In 2026 we are exploring: Inclusive AI, investing in diverse founders and entrepreneurs, the power of allyship and mentorship, and empowering young people.
Career related industry insights:
Other opportunities to get involved:
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Authors
Helen Sussex
Helen Sussex is the Learning & Development Business Partner at North, bringing over 30 years’ experience working across technical, IT and consulting environments. She partners closely with leaders and managers to build capability through apprenticeships, skills frameworks, and practical, on-the-job development - always with a focus on learning that genuinely improves performance and progression.
