AWS Tech Alliance boosts cloud skills and tech jobs across German industries

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Skills to Jobs Tech Alliance (Tech Alliance) is a global coalition of Fortune 500 companies and other employers, educational institutions and training providers, regional and national governments and ministries, and business and workforce development conveners. Since its launch in 2023, the Tech Alliance has been joined by more than 650 employers and more than 970 educatio­­­nal institutions, and has engaged more than 53,000 learners with employers across 11 countries.

Germany’s evolving need for tech talent

Germany is renowned for its engineering innovation and industry strength in sectors such as automotive, manufacturing, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals. This prowess has made it Europe’s largest economy and third largest in the world.

The study “Economic Impact of Cloud Computing in Germany” by Telecom Advisory Services estimates that from 2024 through 2030 a total of 316,000 new jobs will be created in the country due to growing cloud adoption and digital transformation of core industry sectors, thus unlocking up to €502 billion of additional economic value. To realize these benefits, companies and public organizations need to access qualified tech talent with in-demand skills in areas such as cloud, data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), or machine learning (ML). However, in the 2023 “The Future of Jobs Report” by the World Economic Forum, 41 percent of surveyed German organizations expect that talent availability will worsen by 2027. A Bitkom study estimates that the national IT skills gap of 152,000 (in 2024) missing tech talents could more than double to 334,000 by 2030.

Digital transformation provides a large-scale growth opportunity that could stall due to the widening skills gap if not addressed in time. Bringing industry and academia closer together provides industry context with deeper understanding of skill requirements so that education programs and learning opportunities can be tailored to enable the development of required technical and durable skills.

The Tech Alliance model

To address the growing tech skills gap, AWS collaborates with local tech employers, educational institutions, network organizations, and government. In December 2023, AWS launched the Germany Tech Alliance in collaboration with the Bavarian State Government and UnternehmerTUM, a part of Technical University of Munich and Europe’s largest entrepreneurship center with more than 12,500 students per year. The Tech Alliance Germany has since brought together leading industry partners such as Siemens, Deloitte, Accenture, ZOI, Slalom, tecRacer, and Nordcloud, network organizations such as Bitkom, GovTech Campus, and Campus Founders, and educational institutions such as IU International University of applied Sciences, Munich Data Science Institute, Reutlingen University, Heilbronn University, Aschaffenburg University, and Digital Career Institute.

“We need qualified specialists in future digital technologies such as cloud computing,” said Fabian Mehring, State Minister for Digital Affairs of Bavaria. “The AWS Tech Alliance Germany is an outstanding example of how the commitment of tech companies can advance qualifications in the IT sector.”

Collaboration is key to addressing the skills gap

The Tech Alliance model enables collaboration between employers and education institutions, addressing the growing skills gap in Germany’s digital workforce. Partnering with tech employers allows learners to engage in relevant industry challenges, developing depth of technical knowledge and the ability to problem solve, thereby enabling talent identification and targeted recruitment.

The Tech Alliance collaboration starts with an assessment of the employer’s job role profiles and talent needs. Then, these are matched to learner activities that provide opportunities to develop required skills. To engage learners, the Tech Alliance draws on different applied learning activities including AWS Jams or AWS Game Days, AWS Deep Racer, workshops, tech talks, or industry challenges. Furthermore, the Tech Alliance drives collaboration between industry and educational institutions to integrate in-demand tech skills into study programs, such as the Digital Product School program of UnternehmerTUM. For this, the Tech Alliance is supporting institutions to evaluate curricula and to use AWS educational programs and online learning such as AWS Academy or AWS Skill Builder.

How the Tech Alliance supports evolving industry talent needs in Germany

Automotive

Cloud, AI, and ML are changing the way people access and interact with their vehicles. This is driving innovations in enhanced vehicle experiences, driver assistance, autonomous vehicles, and other areas of the automotive value chain.

To address the industry changes, the Tech Alliance helped XL2, a joint venture of Audi AG and Capgemini supporting Audi’s digital transformation, to create an engaging platform for students and apprentices to develop their AI and ML skills while exploring tech career opportunities at Audi AG, Audi Sport, and XL2. In collaboration with the Tech Alliance, these employers launched the AWS Deep Racer Student Cup #1. The competition used AWS DeepRacer, a cloud-based 3D racing simulator that combines model training and a fully autonomous race car driven by reinforcement learning. Over two months, 250 students participated in workshops, AI and ML courses, and a virtual qualifying race. The event concluded with a final race day at Audi Sport – Böllinger Höfe in Germany, featuring a keynote by Audi CIO Frank Loydl, workshops, talks, factory tours, and networking opportunities. The winning team, comprised of two students from TUM Technical University Munich (Heilbronn Campus), secured the main prize: an invitation to compete in the AWS DeepRacer finals at AWS re:Invent 2024.

Participants at the final race of the AWS Deep Racer Student Cup #1 powered by XL2, Audi and Audi Sport. (Credit: XL2)

In comparison, Porsche Digital, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Porsche AG that serves as its digital competence center, has taken a different approach. They developed the Porsche Digital Campus Challenge, a four-month hybrid hackathon bringing together students from Germany and additional countries to tackle real-life challenges posed by company stakeholders from different departments, such as engineering or production. The AWS Tech Alliance supports Porsche Digital’s exploration, demonstrating how AI-based products and features can create value for Porsche’s end customers. To develop further depth of knowledge for the engaged students, AWS contributes with topical tech talks and expert technical coaching, enabling students to build innovative prototypes. These prototypes use Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Bases for using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) techniques, and the Amazon Titan Text Embedding model. The collaboration empowers students to develop forward-thinking solutions aligned with Porsche Digital’s AI-driven vision for customer value. For example, students work on how to embed Porsche brand’s unique vocabulary and industry-specific terminology into AI-based services such as chat bots.

Manufacturing

Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), data analytics, ML, and robotics are transforming manufacturing, building infrastructures or the design of energy systems, introducing concepts such as predictive maintenance in production or energy efficiency analytics within these industries. As the following case illustrates, the Tech Alliance is also promoting tech skills and supporting talent in these sectors.

Siemens empowers customers to transform key economic industry sectors such as transportation, construction, and energy (power grids). The company values future competencies such as low-code development, data analytics, and generative AI, while equally emphasizing the importance of fostering a growth mindset that promotes personal responsibility and self-directed learning. The Tech Alliance helped Siemens create an engaging learning experience for students, showcasing how low-code development and generative AI could drive innovation across a range of industries. In collaboration with Siemens Professional Education and Siemens Digital Industries, the Tech Alliance organized a three-day generative AI and low-code hackathon. During this event, participants connected applications created with Siemens’ low-code platform Mendix to AWS generative AI using Amazon Bedrock and the Mendix Amazon Bedrock Connector. Students worked on real-world use cases related to a model production plant at the Siemens Stuttgart Training Center, developing applications such as predictive maintenance systems and AI chatbots.

Tech talent is a key factor for economic growth

As highlighted in the 2024 AWS Economic Impact Study Germany the future of a prosperous Germany is tied to its digitally skilled workforce. Therefore, the Tech Alliance is also aligned with wider AWS activities driving support and economic growth in the country, such as the plans announced in 2024 to invest €8.8 billion into the AWS Europe (Frankfurt) Region.

The Tech Alliance is also aligned with the plans to invest €7.8 billion in the AWS European Sovereign Cloud (ESC) and to launch its first AWS Region in the State of Brandenburg. The AWS European Sovereign Cloud will be a new independent cloud for Europe, designed to provide further choice to help public sector organizations and customers in highly regulated industries meet their evolving sovereignty needs. To support the growing tech talent demand in the Brandenburg and Berlin states, the Tech Alliance is launching activities specific to that region in December 2024 in the presence of Jörg Steinbach, Brandenburg State Minister for Economy, Labour and Energy. For the launch, the Tech Alliances is collaborating with Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI), a privately funded center of excellence for digital engineering affiliated to Potsdam University.

For more information, such as how to join the AWS Tech Alliance, please visit the AWS Tech Alliance homepage.

Please join the Tech Alliance session (ID# IDE207) on Thursday, December 5 at AWS re:Invent 2024.