{"id":611840,"date":"2026-09-03T22:09:37","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T22:09:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/story\/611840\/ned-curic-calls-for-stronger-engineering-talent-pathways.html"},"modified":"2026-09-03T22:09:37","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T22:09:37","slug":"ned-curic-calls-for-stronger-engineering-talent-pathways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/story\/611840\/ned-curic-calls-for-stronger-engineering-talent-pathways.html","title":{"rendered":"Ned Curic Calls for Stronger Engineering Talent Pathways"},"content":{"rendered":"
U.S.-based technology leader Ned Curic highlights the need to prepare engineers for increasingly complex, software- and AI-enabled product development at global scale.<\/div>\n

New York City, New York – September 3, 2026 –<\/strong> Ned Curic, who is responsible for Product Development & Technology and is a member of the Stellantis Leadership Team, is raising awareness of the growing need to prepare engineers for a product-development environment shaped by software, artificial intelligence, systems integration and increasing technical complexity.<\/p>\n

The issue goes beyond learning individual technologies. Modern engineering teams are being asked to connect software, hardware, data and AI while moving products from early concepts through validation and production.<\/p>\n

Curic’s career has placed him inside that transition.<\/p>\n

He began working in Engineering Systems at Northrop Grumman in 1996 before joining Microsoft in 2000, where his roles covered consulting, product, security and advisory work. He entered the automotive industry in 2013 as Group Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Toyota Motor North America. In 2015, he became Co-founder, Executive Vice President, Technical Director and Board Member of Toyota Connected.<\/p>\n

Curic later joined Amazon as Vice President of Alexa Automotive in June 2017. Today, his responsibilities at Stellantis span Product Development & Technology.<\/p>\n

Across those roles, the engineering challenge has changed considerably. Products that once depended heavily on separate hardware and software functions are becoming deeply integrated systems.<\/p>\n

That shift requires engineers who can understand more than their individual area of expertise.<\/p>\n

Engineering Skills Are Changing<\/p>\n

The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 found that employers expect 39% of workers’ existing skill sets to be transformed or become outdated between 2025 and 2030.<\/p>\n

The report also found that 59 out of every 100 workers are expected to require training by 2030, while 63% of employers identify skills gaps as a major barrier to business transformation.<\/p>\n

Artificial intelligence is accelerating that change. The same report identifies AI and big data among the fastest-growing skill areas through 2030.<\/p>\n

For engineering organizations, the challenge is not simply teaching people how to use the newest tool. Technical teams increasingly need to understand how their decisions affect an entire product.<\/p>\n

Software architecture can influence hardware requirements. Data decisions can affect AI capabilities. A successful prototype can still fail to become a viable product if reliability, integration, manufacturing or validation requirements are considered too late.<\/p>\n

Curic’s career illustrates why systems thinking matters in that environment.<\/p>\n

From Technical Education to Industrial Execution<\/p>\n

Curic studied Informatics and Computer Science and earned an MBA from Pepperdine University’s George L. Graziadio School of Business and Management in 2012.<\/p>\n

His professional experience has since crossed aerospace, enterprise technology, connected services and automotive product development.<\/p>\n

That background points to an increasingly important distinction in engineering education and workforce development: knowing how a technology works is different from knowing how to industrialize it.<\/p>\n

Future engineers will need opportunities to work across disciplines and understand the complete development cycle. That includes architecture, integration, testing, validation, production and ongoing product improvement.<\/p>\n

AI also creates an opportunity to reconsider how engineers work.<\/p>\n

AI-enabled engineering tools can help teams analyze information, explore designs and manage growing complexity. However, those tools do not remove the need for engineering judgement. Organizations still need people who can define the right problem, understand constraints, evaluate trade-offs and remain accountable for the final outcome.<\/p>\n

A Call for Stronger Engineering Pathways<\/p>\n

Curic is encouraging universities, engineering communities, technology organizations and employers to consider how education and industry experience can be connected more closely.<\/p>\n

Practical steps can include expanding multidisciplinary engineering projects, creating stronger university-industry partnerships, giving students exposure to systems architecture and supporting workforce-reskilling programmes for experienced engineers adapting to AI-enabled development.<\/p>\n

Individuals can also take action. Engineering students and professionals can seek projects outside their primary discipline, learn how products move from prototype to production and develop a stronger understanding of the systems surrounding their own work.<\/p>\n

The objective is not to turn every engineer into a specialist in every field.<\/p>\n

It is to develop engineers who understand how their decisions connect to the larger product and who can work effectively across technical boundaries.<\/p>\n

As products become more complex, that ability will become increasingly important to turning ambitious ideas into reliable products at scale.<\/p>\n

To read more, visit the website here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

About Ned Curic<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ned Curic is responsible for Product Development & Technology and is a member of the Stellantis Leadership Team. His career spans engineering systems, software, security, connected technologies and automotive product development, with previous roles at Northrop Grumman, Microsoft, Toyota Motor North America, Toyota Connected and Amazon. Curic studied Informatics and Computer Science and earned an MBA from Pepperdine University’s George L. Graziadio School of Business and Management in 2012.<\/p>\n

Contact:<\/p>\n

Info@ned-curic.com<\/p>\n

Media Contact<\/span>
Company Name:<\/strong> Ned Curic
Contact Person:<\/strong> Media Relations
Email:<\/strong> Send Email<\/a>
Country:<\/strong> United States
Website:<\/strong> ned-curic.com<\/a><\/p>\n

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U.S.-based technology leader Ned Curic highlights the need to prepare engineers for increasingly complex, software- and AI-enabled product development at global scale. New York City, New York – September 3,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611840"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611840\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}