Future Skills for Position, Navigation & Timing: Preparing the workforce to deliver resilient national infrastructure

This report presents the findings of a Workforce Foresighting cycle focused on developing strategic PNT workforce capability. The study was sponsored by Telespazio and delivered by Satellite Applications Catapult in collaboration with the Workforce Foresighting Hub, an Innovate UK initiative.

Why workforce foresighting matters

Workforce foresighting is a systemic approach that enables industry, educators and policymakers to anticipate how emerging technologies will reshape workforce needs. By identifying future skill requirements early, it allows education and training systems to adapt in time, moving skills provision from a reactive to a proactive footing.

In this study, foresighting was applied to one of the UK’s most critical capability challenges: building a workforce able to design, integrate and safeguard resilient, sovereign PNT systems capable of operating alongside or independently of vulnerable GNSS services.

Strategic context

The UK’s reliance on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) creates a significant national vulnerability. PNT services are embedded across multiple critical national infrastructure sectors and disruption—whether caused by jamming, spoofing, cyberattack or geopolitical instability—would have widespread economic and societal impact.

Studies referenced in the report highlight the scale of this risk:

• GNSS contributes approximately £13.6 billion annually to the UK economy
• A seven-day GNSS outage could cost £7.6 billion
• Multiple national infrastructure sectors rely directly on PNT services

In response, government is investing in sovereign and resilient alternatives, including:

• eLORAN and terrestrial backup systems
• National Timing Centre infrastructure
• GNSS interference monitoring
• Quantum-enabled navigation and time-transfer technologies

Together, these represent a transition to multi-layered, hybrid PNT architectures, requiring new cross-disciplinary skills across engineering, systems integration, cybersecurity, regulation and operations.

Implications for the workforce

Key themes which emerged from the work include:

Workforce capability gap in PNT

The study highlights a significant and growing skills gap across the Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) sector, consistently recognised by industry, academia and government stakeholders. At its core, this challenge reflects a misalignment between the pace of technological development and the ability of the workforce and skills system to respond.

Through detailed foresighting analysis, the study identified 145 future capabilities required across the PNT ecosystem and 20 Future Occupational Profiles spanning the supply chain, alongside clear evidence that current education and training provision is not sufficiently aligned to meet this demand.

Shift to system-level capability

Six priority capability themes emerged as critical to the future of PNT: system resilience and alternative positioning solutions, infrastructure integration, regulatory frameworks, cybersecurity and national security assurance, technology innovation and service assurance. Collectively, these themes signal a fundamental shift towards integrated, system-of-systems level thinking. Delivering resilient PNT capability will require not only deep technical expertise but also the ability to design, integrate and govern complex, multi-layered systems. This represents a move away from siloed specialisms towards multidisciplinary capability spanning engineering, digital systems, security and policy.

Structural weaknesses in skills provision

A key barrier to progress lies in the current structure of the skills system itself. The study identified only a partial match between existing apprenticeship standards and future PNT capability needs, highlighting a significant gap in formal training pathways. At the same time, there is heavy reliance on a small number of specialist higher education courses—many of which are under pressure or at risk of closure—creating fragility in the talent pipeline. In the short term, there is a clear need to expand Continuing Professional Development (CPD) to rapidly upskill the existing workforce and bridge immediate capability gaps.

Evolving roles and future workforce

Rather than creating entirely new professions, the transition to resilient PNT systems will largely be delivered through the evolution of existing roles. The study identifies 20 Future Occupational Profiles that bring together the capabilities required across engineering, systems integration, security and leadership functions. Priority roles include PNT Signal Integrity Engineers, Quantum Technologies Systems Engineers, PNT Systems Architects and Timing Network Integration Engineers, alongside strategic and continuity-focused roles such as PNT Risk Managers and Geodesy specialists.

These profiles are not job descriptions, but structured groupings of capabilities that provide a practical framework for workforce planning, curriculum design and role development. Critically, they reflect the increasing need for hybrid skillsets that combine deep technical knowledge with system integration, resilience and governance expertise.

The findings point to a clear and urgent conclusion: the UK’s ability to deliver sovereign, resilient PNT capability will be constrained not by technology, but by workforce readiness. Without coordinated action, the combination of fragmented training pathways, reliance on fragile higher education provision and insufficient upskilling mechanisms risks creating a critical bottleneck in national infrastructure capability.

Addressing this challenge requires a systemic response—protecting and adapting existing education provision, developing new and flexible training pathways and accelerating upskilling of the current workforce. Most importantly, it requires alignment across industry, education and policy to ensure that capability development keeps pace with technological ambition.

Failure to act will leave the UK exposed to both economic and security risks. Conversely, a proactive, coordinated approach to workforce development offers a strategic opportunity: to build a resilient, sovereign PNT capability underpinned by a modern, adaptable and highly skilled workforce.

Next steps

The report highlights that coordinated action is required across government, industry and education to address workforce gaps and build sovereign capability. Priority actions include:

Strengthening national coordination

• Establish governance through national steering groups and industry collaboration

Protecting and evolving education pathways

• Support critical university provision
• Develop new and adapted apprenticeship pathways
• Embed PNT content into adjacent disciplines

Accelerating workforce development

• Expand CPD and reskilling programmes
• Enable transition from adjacent sectors (e.g. cyber, telecoms, engineering)

Building long-term talent pipelines

• Increase awareness of PNT careers
• Embed real-world use cases in education
• Strengthen industry placements and experiential learning