Tech/IT Industry Talent Association

Join employers across Indiana in developing a stronger pipeline of skilled technology talent for their organization and the industries technology supports.

A Technology Talent Pipeline Built by Employers

Technology talent is essential far beyond technology companies. Indiana employers across healthcare, advanced manufacturing, financial services, logistics, government, and other industries need people who can work with data, cybersecurity, software, AI, IT systems, and technology-enabled business functions.

Led by TechIndiana, the Tech/IT ITA brings employers together through INCAP to develop a more intentional pipeline for these roles — building talent around shared statewide competency standards rather than relying solely on an increasingly competitive market for experienced technology professionals.

Employers participate to:

Build talent for high-demand technology occupations
Develop entry-level and internal talent instead of competing only for experienced hires
Help shape statewide competencies around the skills employers actually need
Develop talent through substantial, real-world workplace experience
Build talent through both high school Apprenticeship Programs and adult Career Programs

Turning Employer Demand Into Programs

The Tech/IT ITA is offering 12 INCAP programs for 2027, giving employers options for developing talent across technical, operational, project, and commercial functions. Six are Apprenticeship Programs for high school students, and six are Career Programs for adults.

Although the occupations differ, all 12 use a common approach: employers evaluate participants against statewide competencies using work cases, supervisor evaluation rubrics, and a final portfolio and project. Optional industry certifications can supplement the programs, but program completion is based on demonstrated competency rather than certifications earned.

Don’t see the occupation your organization needs? The ITA’s work is driven by employer demand. Contact the Tech/IT ITA to discuss your workforce needs and help shape future programs including but not limited to:

AI and Robotics
Cybersecurity AP
Digital Media

121,600

Technology workers across Indiana

3.85%

Indiana’s workforce employed in technology

~50%

Technology job postings that do not require a four-year degree

Tech/IT Apprenticeship Programs for High School Students

All six high school Apprenticeship Programs are two-year programs beginning in 11th grade. Students work with their employer two days per week during junior year and three days per week during senior year. In addition, students particate in eight hours per week of online Intercompany Training Center instruction delivered by TechIndiana, in partnership with Awesome People Leaders and Ivy Tech Community College, as well as two eight-week full-time summer work experiences.

Applied AI Associate is a two-year Apprenticeship Program for students in grades 11-12 that prepares early-career talent to use AI effectively and responsibly across business functions.

The Workforce Need

AI use is rapidly becoming part of everyday work rather than a capability confined to dedicated technology roles. Research used by the Tech/IT ITA reports widespread AI adoption among Indiana organizations while structured workforce training has lagged. The research reports that 82.5% of Indiana organizations had adopted AI in its 2025 study, while only 40.5% provided structured AI training.

For employers, the opportunity is to build practical AI fluency into early-career talent now rather than trying to retrofit those capabilities into the workforce later.

The Solution

The program develops competencies in:

Data literacy and preparation
Generative AI foundations
Prompting and LLM applications
Analytics and visualization
Applied model use and human oversight
Automation and AI-enabled workflows
Responsible AI use, security, and adoption

Because AI touches many parts of an organization, apprentices can apply those skills across areas such as marketing, operations, document and knowledge work, and internal analytics. No prior AI experience is required.

The Career Pathway

Students who complete the program earn an INCAP credential. CompTIA AI Fundamentals can serve as an optional supplemental credential.

Data Analytics and Business Intelligence Associate is a two-year Apprenticeship Program for students in grades 11-12 that develops skills to turn an organization’s data into useful, trustworthy information for decision-making.

The Workforce Need

Data analysis is the highest-demand technology role identified by the Tech/IT ITA in Indiana. Employers across healthcare, advanced manufacturing, logistics, financial services, and the public sector report accumulating data faster than they can find people who can turn it into useful business information.

The need isn't necessarily for more data scientists. Employers need people who can clean data, query it, analyze it, and build dashboards the business can trust. The ITA's analysis also identifies unusually rapid growth in Indiana's data roles, as well as extended fill times for open positions.

The Solution

The program develops skills in:

Data foundations and business context
Data collection, cleaning, and preparation
SQL and querying
Statistical reasoning
Visualization and business intelligence
Data governance, quality, security, and privacy
Applied AI
AI-augmented analytics and storytelling

Apprentices apply those skills to real business questions across multiple functions, rather than completing one isolated project. Readiness is demonstrated through work cases, supervisor evaluation, and a final portfolio and project.

The Career Pathway

Students who complete the program earn an INCAP credential. CompTIA Data+ can be added as an optional supplemental credential, but it is not required for program completion.

IT Project Coordinator is a two-year Apprenticeship Program for students in grades 11-12 that develops early-career employees who can help keep technology projects organized, documented, and moving forward.

The Workforce Need

Technology projects require more than technical expertise. Employers also need people who can maintain schedules, track risks and decisions, document changes, coordinate stakeholders, and prepare organizations for implementation.

Those capabilities are often treated as mid-career project management skills, even though much of the underlying coordination work can be developed through structured practice and supervised experience.

The Solution

The program develops competencies in:

Project initiation and governance
Planning and scheduling
Execution and team leadership
Risk, quality, and change control
Tools and documentation
Operational readiness
IT context and security
Organizational change
AI-augmented project delivery

Apprentices work across multiple projects and functions, producing the actual tools of project coordination — schedules, action logs, risk and issue documentation, decision records, communication plans, and other project artifacts.

The Career Pathway

Students who complete the program earn an INCAP credential. CompTIA Project+ and PMI CAPM can serve as optional supplemental credentials.

IT Support Technician is a two-year Apprenticeship Program for students in grades 11-12 that develops versatile technology employees who can support increasingly interconnected devices, systems, cloud environments, security requirements, and users.

The Workforce Need

IT support remains a high-demand entry point into technology work, particularly for small and mid-size employers that cannot hire a specialist for every technology function.

At the same time, the role is becoming more sophisticated. Routine ticket work is increasingly automated, while technicians are taking on responsibilities involving endpoint and identity security, cloud and SaaS administration, and troubleshooting AI-enabled tools.

The Solution

The program develops competencies in:

Hardware support and maintenance
Networking
Operating systems
Security
Troubleshooting
Cloud computing and virtualization
Applied AI and AI security
Service operations, automation, and continuous improvement

Apprentices learn to deploy and support devices and applications, troubleshoot connectivity and access issues, recognize and appropriately escalate potential security events, support cloud environments, and maintain accurate service and asset documentation.

The Career Pathway

Students who complete the program earn an INCAP credential. CompTIA A+, Network+, and Security+ can serve as optional supplemental credentials.

Software Development Associate is a two-year Apprenticeship Program for students in grades 11-12 that develops early-career talent who can contribute within a modern software delivery team — not simply write code.

The Workforce Need

Software development remains one of Indiana's highest-demand technology areas, but the work itself is changing. Narrow programming tasks are increasingly being incorporated into broader software engineering, platform, and AI-assisted development.

Employers need people who can work within an actual development process: understand requirements, collaborate through Git and code review, integrate APIs and databases, test their work, and responsibly use AI-assisted development tools.

The Solution

The program develops competencies in:

Software foundations and problem solving
Application and user-experience development
Back-end development, APIs, and data persistence
Testing, debugging, security, and privacy
DevOps and team delivery
AI-augmented development
Feature ownership and lifecycle delivery

Apprentices work in the employer's own technology environment, building features, using team development tools and processes, testing their work, and participating in supervised deployments. AI coding tools are incorporated with explicit expectations for validation and intellectual-property protection.

The Career Pathway

Students who complete the program earn an INCAP credential. CompTIA AI Fundamentals can serve as an optional supplemental credential.

Technology Sales Associate is a two-year Apprenticeship Program for students in grades 11-12 that combines technical fluency with structured, consultative selling skills.

The Workforce Need

The Tech/IT ITA developed this program from direct employer input rather than published occupational projections. Employers reported that their ability to grow is constrained not only by technical talent but by their ability to sell technology effectively.

The difficult combination to find is someone who can understand a technical product, hold a credible conversation with a prospective customer, identify needs, qualify opportunities, and work effectively with sales engineers and other technical experts.

The Solution

The program develops competencies in:

Technology sales fundamentals
Prospecting and pipeline development
Discovery and qualification
Solution mapping and technical product knowledge
Demonstrations and proposals
CRM, account coordination, and customer success
AI-augmented selling

The statewide standard doesn’t require any one sales methodology; employers can keep their own, allowing them to retain their own sales approach while developing shared underlying competencies.

The Career Pathway

Students who complete the program earn an INCAP credential. Sandler can serve as an instructional framework and optional credential, while CompTIA AI Fundamentals is also identified as an optional supplement.

Tech/IT Career Programs for Adults

All six Career Programs last two years. Adult trainees complete approximately 30 hours per week of workplace training and 10 hours per week of online Intercompany Training Center instruction delivered by TechIndiana, with Awesome People Leaders and Ivy Tech Community College. The programs are designed to develop existing employees and career changers through substantial workplace experience.

Applied AI Associate is a two-year Career Program for adults that helps employers develop practical AI capability within their existing workforce rather than relying exclusively on scarce specialized AI hires.

The Workforce Need

Most Indiana employers do not necessarily need someone capable of developing frontier AI models. They need people who can identify where AI can improve a workflow, prepare information for its use, evaluate whether outputs are trustworthy, and operate within security, privacy, and governance requirements.

The Solution

The program develops competencies in:

Data literacy and preparation
Generative AI
Prompting and LLM applications
Analytics
Human oversight
Automation and simple agents
AI-enabled workflows
Responsible AI use, security, and adoption

The scope is deliberately practical: participants learn to apply existing AI tools and platforms safely and effectively. Advanced model training, machine-learning engineering, and computer-vision development are outside the program's intended competencies.

The Career Pathway

Students who complete the program earn an INCAP credential, with CompTIA AI Fundamentals available as an optional supplement.

Cybersecurity Associate is a two-year Career Program for adults that gives employers a structured way to develop security operations talent rather than competing exclusively for experienced cybersecurity professionals.

The Workforce Need

The Tech/IT ITA identifies cybersecurity as Indiana's hardest technology role to fill, with very high demand and low supply. The ITA's workforce research gives cybersecurity a 10/10 hiring-difficulty rating.

Employers also identified an important opportunity: not every cybersecurity responsibility requires a senior analyst. Alert triage, initial investigation, playbook execution, evidence preservation, and remediation tracking can be developed as associate-level capabilities under appropriate supervision.

The Solution

The program develops competencies across:

identity and access security
endpoint security
network, cloud, and data protection
monitoring and alert triage
incident response and vulnerability workflows
security automation
architecture and governance
AI-augmented security.

Participants learn to investigate activity, follow approved containment procedures, correlate evidence, document findings, support remediation, and — critically — recognize when an issue requires escalation.

The Career Pathway

Students who complete the program earn an INCAP credential. CompTIA Security+ can serve as an optional supplemental credential.

Data Analytics and Business Intelligence Associate is a two-year Career Program for adults that provides a structured way to develop data talent from within an organization or bring adults with valuable industry knowledge into data roles.

The Workforce Need

Employers face a limited supply and long fill times for data talent, while many already employ people in operations, finance, healthcare, logistics, customer service, and other functions who understand the business but lack a structured route into data work.

That domain knowledge can be particularly valuable: an employee who already understands the plant, clinic, customer, or business process can learn the technical tools without first having to learn how the organization works.

The Solution

The program develops skills in:

Data foundations and business context
Data collection, cleaning, and preparation
SQL and querying
Statistical reasoning
Visualization and business intelligence
Data governance, quality, security, and privacy
Applied AI
AI-augmented analytics and storytelling

Because participants are embedded in the business throughout the program, employers can apply their developing skills to real organizational needs while competency is evaluated through work cases, supervisor rubrics, and a final portfolio and project.

The Career Pathway

Students who complete the program earn an INCAP credential, with CompTIA Data+ available as an optional supplement.

IT Project Manager is a two-year Career Program for adults that helps employers develop project leadership capability from employees who already understand their organization.

The Workforce Need

Many employers already have operations supervisors, business analysts, senior support technicians, and functional leaders who coordinate complex work but have never received structured training in project governance, risk management, or change control.

Rather than recruiting externally for every project leadership need, the program allows employers to build formal project-management capability around employees who already possess institutional knowledge and organizational relationships.

The Solution

Participants develop competencies in:

Project initiation and governance
Planning and scheduling
Execution and team leadership
Risk, quality, and change control
Documentation and operational readiness
Security and organizational change
AI-augmented project delivery

Participants manage live projects throughout the program, allowing employers to see their delivery capability develop in real time.

The Career Pathway

Students who complete the program earn an INCAP credential. CompTIA Project+ and PMI CAPM can serve as optional supplemental credentials.

IT Support Technician is a two-year Career Program for adults that develops broad technology capability for employers that need employees who can work across support, systems, cloud environments, security, and vendor relationships.

The Workforce Need

Small and mid-size employers in particular often need broad technical capability but cannot employ a specialist for every discipline. Meanwhile, traditional IT support work is evolving as routine tasks automate and responsibilities expand into endpoint security, identity management, SaaS administration, cloud access, and AI-tool troubleshooting.

The Solution

The program develops competencies in:

Hardware support and maintenance
Networking
Operating systems
Security
Troubleshooting
Cloud computing and virtualization
Applied AI and AI security
Service operations, automation, and continuous improvement

The breadth of the workplace experience helps participants understand how the employer's technology environment fits together rather than learning only one narrow support function.

The Career Pathway

Students who complete the program earn an INCAP credential, with CompTIA A+, Network+, and Security+ available as optional supplemental credentials.

Technology Sales Associate is a two-year Career Program for adults that provides a route into technology sales for people who already have strong customer-facing skills but need technical fluency and structured sales development.

The Workforce Need

Like the high school program, this occupation was developed by the Tech/IT ITA from direct employer input rather than published labor projections.

Employers identified adults in retail, hospitality, insurance, healthcare administration, financial services, and other customer-facing fields as a potentially overlooked talent pool. Many already know how to listen, identify needs, address concerns, and earn trust. The missing pieces are technical fluency and a structured consultative approach.

The Solution

Participants develop competencies across the full B2B technology sales cycle, including:

Prospecting, discovery, and qualification
Solution mapping and technical collaboration
Demonstrations, proposals, and negotiation
CRM, forecasting, and account management
Customer success
AI-augmented selling

The statewide standard doesn’t require any one sales methodology; employers can keep their own, allowing them to retain their own sales approach while developing shared underlying competencies.

The Career Pathway

Students who complete the program earn an INCAP credential. Sandler can serve as an instructional framework and optional credential, while CompTIA AI Fundamentals is also identified as an optional supplement.

Why Build Your Talent Pipeline Through INCAP?

A Shared Model Makes It Easier to Develop Talent

Instead of developing every technology training program independently, employers can work from shared statewide occupational standards while applying those competencies within their own technology environment and business needs.

Employers can:

Spend less time developing training from scratch by using shared, employer-defined competency standards
Help reduce the cost of developing talent by sharing training infrastructure and resources across employers
Build talent instead of only buying it for positions where experienced candidates are difficult to find
Develop internal talent with valuable organizational and industry knowledge
See developing skills applied to real work throughout the program
Help shape technology training around changing employer needs

Develop Technology Talent From a Broader Talent Pool

Technology talent is needed far beyond traditional IT departments and technology companies. In fact, 93% of Indiana technology workers are employed outside technology-sector companies.

INCAP gives employers a way to develop technology talent from multiple starting points — from high school students entering the workforce to adults bringing existing industry and business experience into technology roles.

That creates new ways to build talent for data, AI, cybersecurity, software, IT support, project management, and technology sales rather than competing only for experienced technology professionals.

156 Tech/IT ITA Partners

12 Tech/IT Programs Available in 2027

2 Additional Programs in Development

Your Role as an Employer Partner

Help Shape Industry Training

Employers help ensure programs reflect the skills technology workplaces actually require. The Tech/IT ITA uses common statewide competency standards while allowing those competencies to be demonstrated through the employer’s own systems, projects, processes, and technology environment.

Provide the Workplace Experience

Host employers provide meaningful paid work where participants can apply and demonstrate program competencies under appropriate supervision.

For high school Apprenticeship Programs, students spend progressively more time with their employer, including two required full-time summer experiences. Adult Career Program participants spend approximately 30 hours per week in workplace training. TechIndiana coordinates the related online instruction with Awesome People Leaders and Ivy Tech Community College.

Invest in Talent Development

Contact the ITA to learn more about applicable program fees, wage responsibilities, and available funding support.

Ready to Strengthen Your Talent Pipeline?

TechIndiana leads the Tech/IT Industry Talent Association. Contact the ITA to explore becoming an employer partner, hosting Apprenticeship or Career Program participants, or helping shape technology talent development across Indiana.

Dennis Trinkle
President & CEO, TechIndiana
317-679-5029

Email Dennis | Visit the Tech/IT ITA Website

NOT SURE WHAT YOU WANT TO DO YET?

HAVE A PROGRAM OR ROLE IN MIND?

FOR EMPLOYERS:

FOR SCHOOLS:

ADULT STUDENTS & EMPLOYERS:

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS & SCHOOLS/DISTRICTS:

Tech/IT Industry Talent Association

A Technology Talent Pipeline Built by Employers

Turning Employer Demand Into Programs

121,600

Technology workers across Indiana

3.85%

Indiana’s workforce employed in technology

~50%

Technology job postings that do not require a four-year degree

Tech/IT Apprenticeship Programs for High School Students

Applied AI Associate

Data Analytics and Business Intelligence Associate

IT Project Coordinator

IT Support Technician

Software Development Associate

Technology Sales Associate

Tech/IT Career Programs for Adults

Applied AI Associate

Cybersecurity Associate

Data Analytics and Business Intelligence Associate

IT Project Manager

IT Support Technician

Technology Sales Associate

Why Build Your Talent Pipeline Through INCAP?

A Shared Model Makes It Easier to Develop Talent

Develop Technology Talent From a Broader Talent Pool

156

Tech/IT ITA Partners

12

Tech/IT Programs Available in 2027

2

Additional Programs in Development

Your Role as an Employer Partner

Help Shape Industry Training

Provide the Workplace Experience

Invest in Talent Development

Ready to Strengthen Your Talent Pipeline?