Energy eployers in the Houston area are looking for tech skills, including data analysis, coding and design.
Greater Houston Partnership reported that companies want to maintain production and profitability with lower overhead and they are pushing to automate their operations.
“While statewide employment in the oil and natural gas industry is down by 3 percent compared to a year ago, tech jobs in the sector appear to be growing, especially in Houston where nearly two-thirds of the estimated 228,000 tech jobs in the region are outside of traditional technology companies such as Google, Amazon and Dell," the Houston Chronicle reported recently.
CompTia also released a report that estimated that Greater Houston has approximately 228,000 tech workers, according to the partnership. The partnership believes that about two-thirds of the tech jobs in the area are in energy, aerospace or medicine.
“Demand is super high for tech workers,” Josh Pherigo, a research manager with the partnership, said in a partnership press release. “All the oil and gas companies are digitizing. They’re changing their business models. They all want to know how they can use data to enhance their bottom line.”
Al Monaco, CEP of the Canadian pipeline company Enbridge, told the Houston Chronicle that it's not true that energy companies and pipeline companies are not tech companies.
“Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, industrial applications like ours are a treasure trove of opportunity," he told the Chronicle.
The Chronicle reported that Enbridge opened a technology and innovation lab in its headquarters in Calgary last year and then a second lab in Houston. The employees at the labs work with technology to provide better maintenance and improve pipeline leak detection.
The company is looking into other areas of business as well, like renewables, according to the Chronicle.
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