Defence tech reels from scarce advanced engineering talent: Report

India’s defence-tech industry is grappling with an acute shortage of advanced engineering professionals, who make up less than 5% of its current workforce, according to a report by staffing and workforce solutions firm Quess Corp released on Tuesday.

The talent crunch comes at a time when the sector is scaling rapidly. India’s defence technology market, valued at $7.6 billion in 2025, is projected to grow to $19 billion by 2030—expanding close to 20% annually—with technology-led systems expected to represent nearly half of the overall defence market by the end of the decade.

The report—titled ‘India’s Defence Tech Evolution: Skills Shaping the Next Decade’—finds that India now has 75,000-80,000 defence-tech professionals, with Bengaluru and Hyderabad alone accounting for nearly 60% of this workforce.


Chennai, NCR, Pune and Coimbatore are emerging as the next major hubs, while Lucknow, Goa and Visakhapatnam are seeing growing activity in naval, electronics and R&D capabilities.

The sector is witnessing strong momentum in autonomous platforms, computer vision, advanced sensor systems, counter-drone technologies, underwater robotics, directed-energy research and software-led mission systems.

More than 1,000 defence-tech startups and 194 innovation-linked firms are driving this surge, with 71% of total startup funding flowing into counter-drone solutions—the fastest-growing segment. The counter-drone market alone is projected to reach $1.4 billion by 2029, growing at nearly 17% annually.

Yet, critical engineering roles remain severely understaffed. Specialised capabilities across radar engineering, radio-frequency systems, avionics, propulsion, optical engineering, quantum communication, systems integration, testing, validation and certification collectively account for under 5% of the talent pool.

Quantum engineering roles are especially scarce, making up less than 1% of the workforce. These shortages, the report warns, are already affecting timelines for advanced aircraft programmes, unmanned systems development, naval platforms and secure communication networks.

In a press release, Kapil Joshi, chief executive-IT staffing at Quess Corp, said the sector’s biggest competitive edge now lies in its ability to build talent, noting that “Today, less than 5% of AI engineers, under 2% of cyber specialists, and a similarly small fraction of hard-tech experts in areas like radar, propulsion, quantum and certification are defence-ready,” adding that scaling frontier engineering and AI talent by five to six times will be a national imperative for India to establish itself as a global systems leader.

The study also flags that certification, safety engineering and validation skills face the sharpest shortages. Without targeted skilling, 40-45% of such roles risk remaining unfilled by 2030, potentially slowing production 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-production conversion rate, the report states, remains limited, pointing to significant challenges in scaling manufacturing capacity.