Techfirst womens Programme

Tender description

The TechFirst Women’s Programme is a UK Government workforce‑development intervention designed to increase the participation, retention and progression of women in high‑growth digital and frontier‑technology sectors. Evidence shows that women remain structurally under‑represented across the UK tech workforce, facing systemic barriers including biased recruitment practices, limited access routes, inflexible working patterns, and poor workplace cultures. At the same time, employers—particularly SMEs—are experiencing severe digital skills shortages across key frontier‑technology roles, including AI, cyber security, advanced connectivity, semiconductors, quantum technologies and engineering biology. These labour‑market failures are constraining innovation, productivity and regional growth, and disproportionately impact businesses unable to access or train technical talent. The programme will procure a women‑focused training and deployment model delivering employer‑aligned technical instruction, workplace‑readiness training, wraparound pastoral support, and structured mentoring. This will enable a target of 300 women to progress into meaningful entry and mid‑level roles in frontier‑tech sectors. Training will be co‑designed with employers to ensure alignment with real occupational needs in areas such as software engineering, cyber security, data engineering, cloud/DevOps, AI/ML operations and telecoms/network engineering. The programme should reduce the cost burden on SMEs, helping them to participate in the digital economy and adopt emerging technologies that would otherwise be inaccessible due to recruitment and training costs. The programme sets a target of 80% demployment into mid-career roles, and 20% deployment into early-career roles. The deployment phase will match participants to paid, high‑quality technical roles, with pathway support throughout onboarding and early retention. Delivery partners may deploy a contingent‑workforce approach, ensuring employment decisions into permanent roles remain open, merit‑based and compliant with the Equality Act 2010. The programme sets a target for 80% of deployments to SMEs, with flexibility where regional or sector‑specific SME demand is insufficient. This SME‑first approach strengthens regional innovation ecosystems and ensures benefits flow to the parts of the economy facing the most acute hiring barriers. The expected benefits of the programme include increased representation of women in frontier‑tech roles; improved retention through structured mentoring and culture‑focused employer support; expanded domestic early‑career pipelines; enhanced SME digital adoption; and reduced reliance on international recruitment for mid‑career tech roles. By addressing systemic inequality and market failure, the TechFirst Women’s Programme delivers a targeted, evidence‑based intervention that strengthens the UK’s technology workforce, boosts regional economic resilience, and supports long‑term productivity growth.