Thousands of new engineers needed to support growing eVTOL market in the USA, says VFS

An addi­tion­al 10,000 engi­neers could be need­ed in the next decade to sup­port the grow­ing urban air mobil­i­ty and eVTOL mar­ket in the USA, accord­ing to The Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety (VFS).

In a white paper pub­lished ear­li­er this year, the non-prof­it char­i­ta­ble edu­ca­tion and tech­ni­cal organ­i­sa­tion pre­dicts a three to four-fold increase in work­force to sup­port Future Ver­ti­cal Lift (FVL) alone in the next five years, and a ten-fold increase to sup­port both FVL and the urban air mobil­i­ty indus­try over the next two decades.

It is rec­om­mend­ing revi­tal­is­ing the coun­try’s exist­ing Ver­ti­cal Lift Research Cen­ters of Excel­lence (VLR­COEs) by ‘sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand­ing long-term research grants, com­bined with grad­u­ate edu­ca­tion to train the next gen­er­a­tion of sci­en­tists and engi­neers to retain US com­pet­i­tive edge in the ver­ti­cal lift indus­try.’

It says: “It is time to revi­talise the cen­tres of excel­lence by sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand­ing sus­tained, long-term research grants focused on ver­ti­cal lift tech­nol­o­gy to proac­tive­ly address the grow­ing work­force require­ment and ensure US com­pet­i­tive edge in the ver­ti­cal lift indus­try.”

The cur­rent VLRCOE pro­gram com­pris­es of three uni­ver­si­ty cen­tres, led by Geor­gia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land.

The cen­tres have formed part­ner­ships with out­stand­ing uni­ver­si­ties across the Unit­ed States to strength­en our tech­nol­o­gy base while ger­mi­nat­ing ver­ti­cal lift research and edu­ca­tion at these part­ner insti­tu­tions. Cur­rent­ly, there are 13 part­ners and the Army, Navy and NASA col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly fund the VLR­COEs at nom­i­nal­ly $23M over five years.

Michael Hirschberg, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the VFS, led a pan­el dis­cus­sion of eVTOL work­force devel­op­ment at the US Air Force’s Agili­ty Prime pro­gramme, held between 27th April and May 1st.

He said: “There is a huge need for the top engi­neers and top tal­ent across this coun­try and across the world. And where are those engi­neers going to come from?

“We need the air force, oth­er ser­vices and the gov­ern­ment to invest in the uni­ver­si­ties to devel­op these engi­neers and help make this future a real­i­ty. It requires so many things, and the work­force is one of those crit­i­cal bot­tle­necks that is going to pre­vent us from reach­ing the future that we all want. If the tal­ent pipeline is not very soon, ramped up, this is a zero-sum game.”

You can view the white paper at