IMDA boosts support for fresh tech graduates with more industry immersions, career resources

[SINGAPORE] The Infocomm Media Authority of Singapore (IMDA) announced a slew of initiatives and programmes that provide additional support for tech graduates on Friday (Apr 10).

This is to better prepare them for the workforce even as the first couple of rungs of the traditional career ladder are being disrupted, said Senior Minister of State for Digital Development and Information Tan Kiat How.

“For students who are entering the workforce, we know that this can be daunting; it raises questions like whether companies will still hire fresh graduates,” Tan said at the Singapore Computer Society AI Conference 2026.

The TechSkills Accelerator for Institute of Technical Education and Polytechnics (TIP) Alliance will expand to include university students.

The new programme, TIP Alliance+, will extend its predecessors’ industry-led training model with structured career pathways, hands-on experience and industry partnerships to the expanded audience.

This will build on TIP Alliance’s existing track record of offering over 1,000 tech jobs and facilitating more than 2,300 year-long internships for ITE and polytechnic students since September 2022. The initiative will also be extended to university students.

IMDA also launched Government Tech Pathway in partnership with GovTech and the Singapore Computer Society.

It will provide students with hands-on opportunities to develop technical and domain capabilities in areas such as governance, compliance and public sector systems.

This is part of the regulator’s efforts to equip information and digital technology graduates with technical and domain expertise.

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The pathways will have a series of bite-sized modules to equip graduates with specialised expertise and understanding of how technology is used across different sectors. This will help graduates to contribute quickly and effectively when hired.

The Government Tech Pathway is the first of several sector-specific pathways, which will be developed in collaboration between the public sector and industries.

Similar pathways are being developed for financial services with the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Institute of Banking and Finance.

IMDA has also partnered e2i to launch the Tech Elevation and Career Hub, an online platform providing information on tech jobs, training programmes and career resources. For a start, around 800 jobs are available on this platform.

Demand for tech professionals remains robust, said Tan, with the number of tech professionals in Singapore growing from 208,300 in 2023 to 214,000 in 2024 based on IMDA’s Singapore Digital Economy Report 2025.

About 60 per cent of the tech workforce in Singapore is employed by non-tech firms like banks, logistics firms and manufacturing plants, said Tan.

Demand for tech roles is expected to grow among non-tech firms as they have posted a 3.9 per cent increase in such positions between 2023 and 2024, Tan noted. This is compared with a 1.1 per cent growth for tech firms.

“We expect this trend to increase and to continue as AI adoption picks up pace across industry sectors” he added.