A lawyer, a software developer, and a mechanic walk into a bar.
You’re waiting for the punch line because it sounds like a joke. But the “bar” is in an airport, and all three work for the same airline. One handles contracts and regulations, one writes code, and one keeps airplanes running. Different jobs. Same industry.
Today, someone can serve you coffee at 35,000 feet, sell you a designer handbag between gates, and (hopefully) make sure your suitcase arrives in the same city as you (preferably, at the same time).
When the Wright brothers completed the first successful powered flight in 1903, it lasted 12 seconds and traveled 120 feet. There were no passengers, airports, bags, or workforce.
They proved the airplane could fly. Aviation still had to be built. Someone had to train pilots and mechanics, build airports, write operating rules, and create the businesses making commercial flight possible.
New technologies rarely arrive with an industry already around them. (You probably don’t need air traffic control to see where we’re headed…)
Quantum is here, even as the technology develops. Like the airplane, quantum arrived without “industry” pre-installed. Building one means growing the workforce alongside the technology. LinkedIn can list openings, but it won’t create the applicants. Education and training take years to build, often having to be figured out before future jobs even have titles.
For regions building quantum ecosystems, workforce development is economic development. Research, equipment, and companies create momentum, but only prepared people can turn it into the capacity to sustain an industry.
So, who belongs in the quantum workforce, anyway?
If “quantum workforce” made you picture a room full of physicists and immediately excuse yourself from consideration, come back! Let’s fix the picture first.
If aviation only hired aerospace engineers, there would be beautifully designed airplanes and nobody to fly them. An industry needs a team, but not everyone needs to understand the underlying science in the same way. The mechanic understands flight differently than the software developer or the lawyer.
Quantum works the same way. A researcher may need years of specialized training, while an engineer may need enough quantum knowledge to evaluate an application, and an HR professional may need just enough to understand the work.
Rather than asking who is “quantum enough,” it helps to look at how people work with quantum. Broadly, they fall into three groups.
For some, quantum IS the specialty. Researchers and developers advance the science and core technologies, from hardware and algorithms to networks and sensors, often after years of advanced study.
For others, quantum meets another specialty. Engineers, programmers, technicians, cybersecurity professionals, and industry experts bring skills from elsewhere, then add the quantum knowledge their role requires. They may build or operate systems, or decide whether quantum is useful for a problem they already understand.
For the third group, quantum is just the industry. Legal, finance, communications, HR, sales, and product professionals need just enough quantum literacy to do their jobs.
Chicago Quantum Exchange hiring data backs up the broader picture: a PhD is not the price of admission for the entire industry. A workforce this broad needs more than one entry point.
The answer to “What do you want to be when you grow up?” might get more interesting.
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) is building Chattanooga’s quantum workforce before the job market is fully defined, from K-12 classrooms to mid-career training.
For students who want quantum to be the specialty, UTC created Tennessee’s first bachelor’s degree in quantum physics, with hands-on training and undergraduate research. A quantum science PhD is also in development.
For those bringing another specialty, UTC’s four-course Quantum Information Science and Technology (QIST) certificate helps non-physicists and people without advanced degrees build quantum programming skills alongside backgrounds in computer science, engineering, or math.
Future workers may not even know quantum is an option yet. Quantum Summer Camps and World Quantum Day activities bring high school students into UTC labs to explore core concepts and see the technology up close. UTC also connects CQC’s TN QuantumWorks K-12 initiative with higher education and research opportunities, exposing students to quantum as early as elementary school.
Reaching students also means preparing their teachers. UTC has brought both K-12 educators and higher-education faculty to campus for quantum training, including teachers from 16 local middle and high schools through Quantum Computing, Mathematics, and Physics Camp (QCaMP) and faculty and researchers from across the country for a workshop on quantum security and machine learning. More instructors who understand how quantum connects with their disciplines means more students can encounter it through subjects they already study.
Workforce development is also built into UTC’s $1.33 million National Science Foundation QuantumGrid planning grant (remember “Avoiding a Plot Twist on the Power Grid?”). UTC is coordinating the effort to explore how quantum technologies might support the electric grid.
Through the grant, UTC is working with partners including Chattanooga State Community College, where stackable credentials in quantum-enabled networking and cyber defense are in development, and CQC, whose Quantum Ready Pre-Apprenticeship helps working professionals add foundational quantum knowledge to experience they already have.
And what would those opportunities be without access to the technology?
Through its partnership with EPB, UTC became the first American university permanently connected to a commercially available quantum network, giving students and researchers access to real infrastructure and UTC’s quantum networking and sensing labs. An expanded partnership announced in 2026 calls for UTC to add roughly 135 to 240 faculty, staff, and students connected to its quantum initiatives over five years.
Eventually, the training, technology, and experience have to meet around a real problem.
Getting an industry off the ground takes a whole crew.
Speaking of the electric grid, figuring out whether a quantum technology could improve grid security takes a team.
A quantum researcher understands the technology. An electrical engineer knows the grid. A programmer understands how systems communicate. A cybersecurity professional looks for vulnerabilities. A technician knows what can actually be installed. A utility expert knows what still has to work at 2:00am on a random Tuesday.
And even the quantum experiment eventually needs a budget, a purchase order, and probably a lawyer.
Put them on the same problem, and the workforce categories described earlier become a real team. Each brings different expertise and needs a different amount of quantum knowledge.
Maybe you’ve heard Chattanooga described as a “living laboratory” or “testbed.” For the workforce, the real value is access. UTC students and professionals can work alongside active research using EPB’s quantum infrastructure while partners across higher education, utilities, startups, and quantum companies tackle related questions.
For now, the payoff is experience: evaluating where quantum may help, where it may fall short, what a real system would require, and how to work across specialties.
A century of aviation makes the point easier to see. Nobody expects the person scanning your boarding pass to understand aerodynamics. Aviation works because thousands of different jobs grew around the technology, each with its own skills and responsibilities.
Quantum is much earlier in its story, with technologies, companies, and jobs still taking shape as the field develops. But equipment, labs, networks, and research funding are only part of the infrastructure a new industry needs. Experience is infrastructure, too.
Preparing people now gives Chattanooga more capacity to evaluate opportunities as they emerge instead of scrambling for expertise after demand arrives.
The lawyer, the software developer, and the mechanic at the airport bar didn’t invent the airplane, but aviation couldn’t run without them. Quantum will need the same kind of workforce to build an industry around the technology. UTC is helping lead that work in Chattanooga, using its academic and research strengths to connect partners, programs, and people to build the talent infrastructure a quantum industry will need to get off the ground.
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