Australia has 40,000 licensed drone pilots and 3,034 registered drone companies, with Airservices Australia projecting 60 million flights by 2043. The workforce needed to support that future does not yet exist. Global Drone®’s Future Careers Day is designed to build it — starting with the students sitting in classrooms right now.
A Dedicated Student Day Inside a Professional Congress
Friday, 13 November is a dedicated student day at the Global Drone® event. It sits inside a broader congress that brings together government, academia, and industry to identify the talent Australia needs to compete in the drone, robotics, and AI era. The day does not operate as a standalone careers fair. It runs as an active, hands-on program inside Australia’s leading UAV and robotics event — placing students directly alongside working professionals, live flight demonstrations, and exhibiting drone and robotics companies.
The Delivery: Five Activity Zones, One Clear Pathway
The program runs across rotating activity stations in small groups over a 2–3 hour afternoon session. Each zone is led by a different delivery partner and targets a distinct set of skills and career connections.
Drone Discovery Lab – How Things Fly is led by Global Drone® Show exhibitors and aerospace educators. Students handle real drone components, observe guided demonstrations, and complete a “Build-a-Drone” mock-up using modular parts. The outcome: a tangible understanding of how UAV systems work.
Women in Defence & Aerospace – Pathways That Fly is led by Australian Defence Magazine’s Women in Defence representatives. Students hear 10-minute career talks from women working in defence, aviation, engineering, and tech, rotate through “Ask Me Anything” table discussions, and receive career trading cards mapping roles, skills, and interests. The Australian Defence Magazine Women in Defence Awards programme — which in 2025 drew more than 400 attendees to the National Arboretum in Canberra — sits behind this zone, providing the network of visible role models.
New Horizons STEM Challenge – Innovation with Purpose is led by Gunggandji Aerospace. Gunggandji Aerospace is Australia’s only 100% Aboriginal-owned, DISP Level 1 Accredited aerospace and defence consultancy, Supply Nation certified and B Corp certified. Student teams design a drone mission — disaster relief, reef monitoring, or bushfire detection — then present their concept in 60 seconds. Gunggandji’s Raising Horizons program, which already reaches students from 29 remote communities across North and Far North Queensland including the Torres Strait Islands, won the Diversity Initiative Program of the Year at the Australian Space Awards 2025.
Code, Control & Create – Being the Pilot teaches block-based coding, flight simulators, and obstacle-course logic challenges appropriate to the student’s age. Students learn that piloting and coding are learnable skills — not specialist knowledge reserved for a select few.
Defence & Community Pathways Corner – Where This Could Take You is led by Defence Kidz and industry mentors. Students work through an interactive pathway map tracing the route from current school subjects through training into careers, complete a “skills passport” stamp activity across all stations, and hold direct mentor conversations.
Who the Day Is Built For
The program targets Years 6–12 students aged 10–18. It specifically prioritises children of veterans and serving Defence members, Indigenous students, and girls and underrepresented groups in STEM. No prior technical experience is required to attend.
This targeting is deliberate. Gunggandji Aerospace’s Raising Horizons program has already demonstrated what targeted, industry-connected delivery can achieve for First Nations students in remote and regional Queensland. The Women in Defence program brings the same intentionality to girls and women considering aerospace careers.
The Careers the Day Is Connecting Students To
The drone and robotics sector requires a specific and growing range of professionals. The roles include Drone Software Developers, Remote Pilot Licence holders, Payload Integration Engineers, Geospatial Data Scientists, Drone Systems Engineers, Environmental Research Specialists, Infrastructure Inspection Technicians, Agritech Data Analysts, Drone Compliance Specialists, Health and Emergency Drone Operators, and Autonomous Drone Engineers. Each of these roles requires a different combination of technical skills, certifications, and sector knowledge — and each is represented by exhibitors on the floor of the Global Drone® event on Future Careers Day.
The Bigger Economic Picture
Adoption of robotics and automation in Queensland alone is projected to create 725,810 jobs and boost Gross State Product by $77.2 billion over 10 years, according to a report commissioned by QUT and the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision. The Global Drone® event itself has an estimated annual economic injection of $19.75 million into the region.
Future Careers Day is the on-ramp connecting the next generation of Queenslanders to that opportunity — before they graduate, before they choose their subjects, and before the industry decides to look elsewhere for its workforce.
