Josh Olds on How Drones Are Transforming High-Demand Industries

Josh Olds: Future of Work Florida

Narrator: welcome to the Future of Work Florida podcast brought to you by the Florida Chamber of Commerce and Florida Chamber Foundation. This podcast series is dedicated to equipping Florida's business leaders with the knowledge, solutions and resources available to secure Florida's workforce talent. Today, our Vice President of Talent Development for the Future of Work, Rachel Ludwig, sits down with Josh Olds, President and CEO of usi. The two discuss how drones are transforming many high demand industries and the career pathway opportunities available for learners to enter this exciting work.

Rachel Ludwig: It's great to have you here on the podcast today, Josh. I know we've met a few years ago, uh, when I was leading our integrated education and training efforts at the Florida Department of Education and just really appreciate staying connected and continuing to learn more about the work you are doing to train and uh, elevate awareness really of the drone industry to build the strong talent pipeline that Florida needs to continue to thrive. So I'm really excited for this conversation today.

Josh Olds: No, I appreciate you having me and um, as always, uh, love having the conversation around uh, drone technology.

Rachel Ludwig: Excellent. So before we dive in, I would love for you to kind of level set for our audience. Just share a little bit about, you know, your career journey and the launch of USI and sort of the work you're doing in Florida to elevate career opportunities related. Related to drones.

Josh Olds: Yeah. Perfect. So, you know, it's, it's interesting. I've got a unique background to the drone industry. I actually grew up in agriculture. Uh, so I, I grew up on a horse ranch up in Northern Michigan. And it wasn't until I graduated I knew I wanted to go into aviation. And the only reason behind that was because we had a lot of ag aircraft um, that were around our, our home in Michigan. And so I, I just always loved aviation. And so I ended up um, going to the university aviation. So became a um, multi commercial instrument rated pilot. Uh, when I finished, the economy had just really um, had tank. This was like the 2008, 2009 era. And so there were no airline jobs, there were no pilot jobs. And uh, so I stuck around, ended up getting an airframe and power plant mechanic certificate. And so at that point I was dual rated. But still, um, there were not a lot of jobs available in the aviation industry at this time. And so an aviation industry is an incredible, incredibly uh, cyclic in its nature. And so I ended up right after college getting uh, hired by Textron. And Textron's a massive manufacturer of uh, aircraft like traditional aircraft. So they own Cessna and Bell helicopter and like big aviation companies, they had a unmanned aviation division at the time was called AI Corp, now it's Textron Unmanned Systems. And so I started my career there because I needed somebody to fix and fly the technology and I happened to be able to fly and fix. So it was kind of this, this unique falling into drones that I had no intention ever to be in the drone industry, but it was a job and I had to pay for a, ah, very expensive education. And so um, at the end of the day, uh, I ended up learning a ton from that endeavor. Um, I ended up leaving that role. I was an instructor operator, pilot technician for them for a couple years and then I shifted to anti piracy. So it was actually flying remotely piloted drones that helicopters on behalf of oil and gas. So I was operating in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Africa. We were flying helicopters as a, ah, ah, means of show of force and um, incident response. But that was the first transition I had had coming out of more like DoD contracting training. This was very much a commercial application of drone technology in the oil and gas industry long before part 107 and, and commercialization in the U.S. was occurring. So for me it was just this unique dynamic of being able to learn about drone technology as it related to aviation. Um, and then fast forward. I ended up working in the university system for a little while when I came back to the U.S. um, because I was on full time travel, got married, had to settle down. So at that point, um, that's when I got a master's degree in aeronautics. And so it was a slow progression of both commercial aspects, educational aspects, worked at that time in some dual enrollment programs in the state of Florida. And so really learned about the high school systems, the collegiate systems, already had a background in the drone tech. And so we started USI, uh, Unmanned Safety Institute in 2014. And the concept was around safety principles that were very familiar to traditional aviation but were lacking in the drone industry. That at the time was incredibly early days. Um, and so USI bloomed from that. And uh, anyway it's been running that since uh, 2014.

Rachel Ludwig: That is amazing. You touched on so many things in your opening remarks. Um, I know the ANP certification and some of those careers, you know, we talk about that a lot sort of on the supply and demand front. But one of the things that I really heard from, that resonated with me from your comments, is you know, how much people should really think about. They're taking bits and pieces from every single experience and sort of, you don't really know where the career journey is going to lead you. And, um, just those foundations, foundational skills and, um, networks and things that are, you know, kind of drawn from your early time, like, has really kind of culminated in this opportunity to, to run a business and to really, um, support Florida in a really big way. As we're prioritizing aviation and airspace in, you know, in our kind of future, but currently as well in investments and things like that. That's so awesome. Um, when we talk about drones, so aviation, obviously I've talked to you about this. I have a real interest in the industry and have family members who've worked in the drones specifically. And I, you know, you really were, you know, at the forefront of working on all this. And it's. So we're so fortunate to have you in our state to be able to promote this, um, you know, what, what I consider an emerging industry, but you've been working in it for so long now. Um, I would love to kind of dive into a little bit about, like, the industries where drones are creating new jobs and also like, some specific job titles or types where, you know, if you're interested in getting into drones, sometimes people think about, like, aerial photography or some of the other things, you know, that, like our neighbors do when they're driving, you know, their drones around the neighborhood. But can you touch on sort of some of those things, um, that could really help someone who's just like, interested in aviation. Kind of sounds like you were, and, you know, I was. And other people are definitely. How can we get into that, um, that field?

Josh Olds: No, it's a great question. And I would say it's. It's actually one of the biggest challenges of the industry today are defining what jobs are available in the industry and what are they called? Um, because everybody kind of thinks about drone pilot and they're like, okay, that's the job. I want to be a pilot for drones. And the reality is, um, actually, the specific term that the SOC code data has for drone piloting is the electromechanical technician. Nobody goes out there and looks for that job role. And not a lot of companies are calling those job roles electromechanical technicians. So when we look at the drone industry, I think one of the most interesting aspects, and again, I'm a bit of an aviation nerd. Uh, uh, that never left me. And so when you look at the history books and you look at first sustained flight was in 1903. First sustained aircraft flight. Fast forward to 2025, and we have gone to space. We've Got jet aircraft, we've got all of this aeronautical innovation and technology, the drone industry. The first commercial rule was part 107 which was published in 2016. And so fast forward it's been nine years of part 107. And again, um, myself included, it seems very slow to get to the next footprint of what part 108 which is a rule we'll talk about in a second, which is kind of the next iteration of drone technology. But you think about how far drone technology I mentioned when I flew anti piracy, that helicopter was 650,000 doll, it was 100 and some pound remotely piloted helicopter. That same technology today, and this is about 15 years later, wouldn't be worth $45,000. That's how far technology has come in that 15 year stance. So I say all of that to say that the pages of history are flipping a lot faster in the drone industry when compared to aviation. With, with over 120 years of aviation, the drone industry has been a very small part, but it's coming very long way. So when we talk about job roles, we're really only 10, nine to 10 years into the industry. The initial job roles were called remote pilot. And so if you were to go out and find a job that was called a remote pilot, it required a part 107. The part 107 was the individual's commercial requirement to fly. When you look at that in comparison, it was a knowledge based credential of 60 questions. It was a knowledge based credential that allowed you to fly commercially but there was no skill set validation as part of that. And so when we look at the industry today and what those jobs are being called, we've seen it called everything from um, uh, uh, uh, an engineer. I've seen engineering roles with drone pilot jobs M all the way to public safety. You know, um, drones is a ah, first responder kind of role and they're not calling them remote pilots. It is typically you're an electrical lineman that has drones as part of your job or you're an agronomist where you're leveraging drones as part of what you're doing in agriculture or you're in telecom infrastructure and you're a uh, tower inspector inspector. But your, your drones is part of what you do. So we really lay out the industry today in really two verticals and that is aircraft under 20 pounds, visual line of sight. And again this is USI. So this is just how we look at the landscape of the industry from a uh, risk based lens for both airborne and ground based. When you look at the industries, you have the drone as part of an existing career field. So you think about every industry cluster that has a job role and that's everything from agriculture to construction to the electrical utilities industry to telecom to forestry. You can go on and on going through all the job clusters. They're all using drone technology, but it's typically a tool as part of the existing job. There's also a vertical of the industry where we're calling it advanced or BV loss beyond visual line of sight operations where you are the full time pilot of that technology or you are the full time technician of that technology. It's typically more expensive. And this is kind of going back to your earlier comment. When we think about it in real estate or we think about it for, you know, capturing video, that is very much a use case. But, but the drone industry is so much bigger than that. And you can look at that from like a transportation logistics perspective, a package delivery. You know, Amazon has made the public announcements that they're going to be in Tampa and Miami by the end of the year in Florida, which is incredibly exciting from a state perspective. I mean our ability to get packages within 30 minutes, that's just a cool thing. And so that's coming. It's, it's in, we keep, we always talk about drones and kind of their use cases in future tense. But it's exciting to be talking about it like it's now, it's happening right now in the state of Florida. And so job roles are evolving across industry clusters Is my big point here is the nomenclature being used for the jobs is very specific to the industry cluster that you're going into. Unless you're going to be a remote pilot on behalf of an organization flying beyond visual line of sight. The new rules that I mentioned earlier are Part 108, the Notice of proposed rulemaking has been released. Public comment is due, uh, basically is uh, due to be submitted by October 6th of this year. Once public comment period is done, the expectation is that rule will get published in the early part of 2026. What that rule is is it's organizationally based. So it is basically an organization or entity becomes part 108, um, either permitted or certificated. That now allows job roles underneath those umbrellas. From the maintenance tech, they've identified two new roles in the nprm. One is an operations supervisor and one is a flight coordinator. So when you look for roles, depending on what you want to do in the industry, if you want a pilot, um, looking for the Flight coordinator role, um, or the operations supervisor role are natural high skill, high wage career fields. And again, not that 107 is not a high skill, high wage career field, but it is very specific on the industry cluster deploying that technology as a tool versus bigger, more complex technologies that are very much being operated as aviation assets within a corporation. Those job roles are very different and the risk profiles are very different. And so are the pay scales depending upon the industry that you're utilizing that technology in. So a very long, roundabout answer to answer your question on job roles and titles. Yeah, um, the main point there is it's not well defined by industry cluster, but what you're looking for are drone use within, maybe it's an industry that you're interested as an individual, or if drones are really your thing and that's you're interested, start looking at those two job roles that are identified by the FAA as part of Part 108, because that's what companies will begin using as the nomenclature behind those job roles.

Rachel Ludwig: That makes total sense. That's awesome. And yeah, so I mean, I'm imagining as this is rolling out, like some of the training and certifications and things like that will need to change, especially if they're being woven into all these other careers and different technical training programs and things like that. I mean, do you say that folks who are interested in this kind of work, do they tend to, you know, go to a technical college or state college, or do they do some sort of outside training or certification preparation? Like what kinds of skills are a good fit for pursuing drone related careers?

Josh Olds: So today inside of the industry, I would say it is varied. Uh, point being is you can find some job roles that will employ you with industry credentials alone. Um, you'll find other job roles that will require you to have a four year degree. It all ties back to the organization's business model in terms of how they're. Again, three reasons companies use drones. Make money, save money, or reduce hazard hours within the corporation. And so when you look at the landscape of job roles, whether this is package delivery, whether this is agriculture, it's very specific to the company's risk profile in terms of who they're willing to hire and the salary ranges they're willing to hire at. And so from a employability perspective, one of the biggest feedback items we have on the workforce side is that competencies alone are not enough. Skill set validation is critical to the industry. So part 107 is a requirement to work for hire, um, to fly drones for hire. But it is traditionally not been enough to gain those high skill, high wage career fields because experience is key within this space. This is a very, think of it like aviation, where once you have your multi commercial instrument, companies need you to have the hours to be insurable to fly those technologies. Very, very similar in that once you have experience on aircraft, building those flight hours or building that time that you maintain aircraft, what it demonstrates to the employer is not just competencies from a proctored certification perspective, it also demonstrates skill set and experience operating technology. And the other comment I would make to that is it's not enough to just log time in a logbook like in aviation. What we found within the drone industry, because telemetry is recordable, it is much more beneficial to have a digital logbook that tracks the telemetry of aircraft you're flying because you now have a digital job portfolio with all the telemetry files, which again, from a traditional aviation perspective, you really couldn't get the black box data to tie into your law book in the drone world. All of that's recorded through telemetry. So capture your hours through telemetry, log everything you do tied to the industry. Because experience is king inside of the drone industry in terms of being able to demonstrate to an employer you're worth the high skill, high wage. In this space, it's very much about competencies and skill sets. Degrees are important and they will absolutely allow, uh, you to move up within that organization and M to management. But when it comes to operating and maintaining right now, the biggest needs we see by companies are the competencies and skill sets necessary to do the job.

Rachel Ludwig: Yeah, that's what makes all sense. And I imagine that are you then kind of curating that time from the records, the telemetry records or whatever to create sort of this portfolio of work or what have you to submit. I know that employers are asking for that kind of like proven experience that you've done some of the work in whatever kind of setting. Honestly, um, it could be in a classroom setting, it could be sort of on your own or what have you. Right?

Josh Olds: Absolutely. I would say it's actually one of the items we provide to any workforce program are digital logging tools. Because it's so important and it's not just logging one aircraft. Like the other value is, look, if you've flown five different kinds of aircraft and flown different user interfaces and have hours on these platforms, it's important to be able to log and demonstrate that to the employer to say, look, not only have you flown hours on one specific platform, you have experience on different user interfaces. It's one of the biggest challenges of this space is there is no common user interface to any one technology. And so every piece of technology is different in how it operates, what the safety systems are. Um, and so building time on different systems and logging that all into a job portfolio that you can provide as part of that interview process. It's key. Um, we've got a lot of case studies around being able to answer the mail when it comes to interview questions around safety around experience. And having those law books is just a great way to demonstrate that in a real way with validated information.

Rachel Ludwig: Absolutely. I think a lot about how you said this industry is just evolving and the pages are turning so quickly and I think, um, there's a lot of interest from our traditional K12 uh, learners to want to go into this field and work with drones and technology and things like that, as well as I imagine with our post secondary students. Um, but one thing that I think about a lot is sort of upskilling and the reskilling of our existing workforce and people that are working in some of these careers. You mentioned line workers or in agriculture, construction, all that, that have to sort of all of a sudden, you know, need to use that technology. Uh, what kinds of training, you know, is that are in place? Or maybe you guys work to sort of specifically target training for sort of mid career and late career professionals that really need those skills to stay relevant in the roles they have, you know.

Josh Olds: Yeah, you, you're hitting on probably one of the hottest topics in the space today, which is the upskilling requirements for drone technology. I often compare it to computer technology in the 90s. You know, when you think about when we first introduced computer technology to corporations, it was so easy to continue using paper because that's what was always done. You look at we're in 2025, how many companies are still paper based? Um, very, very few. Everybody goes to computers because the efficiency gained through digital technology is immense. And so the same thing is happening with drone technology. So upskilling is critical for corporations that want to deploy and scale their workforce leveraging drone technology. Think about from a inspection perspective, the ability to not have to climb m a utility pole saves the need, um, to put somebody in harm's way. Or flare stack inspections in the oil and gas industry, or tower inspections in the infrastructure industry. If you can keep a human being off of um, a tall place, you reduce the hazard hours and the insurance requirements, um, of that individual having to go up the pole. You're now leveraging drone technology to accomplish that work faster, more efficiently and you have a digital data record that's now stored that you can track and maintain the maintenance of that asset. So from a reskilling perspective, again usi, this is something we've been doing for over 11 years. We have programs on the maintenance tech side, we have programs on the operational side. And again I mentioned earlier that primary and advanced track. The idea is that you're leveraging that drone technology as a tool and there's a risk profile of leveraging that technology in a visual line of sight capacity. And so we have training profiles, we call them UAS boot camps that are condensed training programs to gain the competencies and flight based skill sets needed for the industry today. Um, as an example, Amazon Career Choice are basically employees working at warehouses. Amazon Warehouses in the state of Florida are transitioning through USI as part of the Amazon Career Choice program, leveraging the ASTM approved training program as the standard of upskilling to then go through the OJT at Amazon as part of their package delivery, uh, flight coordinator roles. And so every industry cluster has a different need for upskilling. What USI focuses on are the risk profiles of an organization from a ground and airborne based perspective and the complexity of the aircraft and the operation. So we have two different tracks, one at the advanced level for beyond visual line of sight, one at the primary level that goes above and beyond part 107. And what it's doing is it's basically taking somebody that may not have a background in aviation or technology and it's upskilling them to be able to both understand the faa, which again, uh, that's a lift in and of itself to understand airspace and the legal requirements of operating and to understand the technology as it's literally a aircraft that's operating the payload. And typically that's the most important part of the whole op. It's about the data that that entity or uh, company is looking to acquire to leverage for business use cases. And so it's, it truly is a tool at that level. But knowing how to fly it, maintain it is part of how you scale and ensure a repeatable, sustainable operation, uh, for the years to come.

Rachel Ludwig: I mean we, I don't think we can have a, a podcast or talk about drones without talking about AI. Uh, obviously we are constantly talking about how that impacts different lines of work. But how do you think that AI is sort of influencing drones and drone related careers? And I know it's hard to predict, but maybe what is it going to look like in the next five to 10 years?

Josh Olds: It's a great question. I mean look, AI is revolutionizing the way companies do business. I mean it's creating efficiencies. It's unbelievable at ah, research. It can create graphics, images, m. I mean it's doing unbelievable amounts work for companies. And so you kind of look at artificial intelligence and what it can do and we've talked about this before, but the AI proofing of careers in the future, I mean having young kids, you're always thinking about what does the future look like for your children and what does AI proofing, which is kind of that coin term, what does that even mean? And so when you look at what AI can do and you look at drone technology, AI is already being utilized because you think about the immense amount of data that's being captured, whether it's the electric utility industry, the agricultural industry. Every image or video that drone technology is capturing has to be analyzed. And an individual, a person to go through and analyze all that data is nearly impossible. It's terabytes and terabytes of information. So AI is being leveraged to analyze the pixels of those images to be able to make decisions and find anomalies inside of that data. So on the data side, AI is um, revolutionizing how data being captured is being analyzed and put to use inside of the business. On the operational side, AI again, it goes to that human machine interface. Um, what can the human do better than technology? The reality is technology can reduce all sorts of human error. The one thing the human can do better than technology is make judgment calls. And so, so when you introduce AI as a partner inside of the piloting or operating space, you allow that pilot to make judgment calls while the AI reduces the human error available or that's inherent to the operation. And so it's a merging of uh, leveraging technology like AI, uh, with the human component in the loop on operations and you're able to operate a lot more aircraft at once. And so when you look into the future, it's one to many, it's one pilot to many aircraft where AI is helping support the monitoring of systems inside of an operation. And then it's also um, AI again, future proofing. What can AI not do? It's not going to fix and repair and return to service the technology. So we at USI really believe that technicians with the number of aircraft you're going to have in the national airspace, number of drones you're going to have in the national airspace with package delivery and all of the other industry clusters, maintenance technicians to fix, repair and return to service. This technology is going to be one of the largest career fields in the next five years to ten years. Um, this is both on the manufacturing side, the fixed repair, return to service, um, that is an amazing career field that is AI proof because it requires hands on skill sets and the use of tools to fix, repair, uh, aircraft, return to service. So that's kind of my crystal ball in terms of what the next five to ten years looks like. But you will see a reduction in the need for pilots long term. Um, but your maintenance technicians are going to scale, um, exponentially.

Rachel Ludwig: Absolutely. I think in most things it's like you can't replace the people who come in to fix all the things that we've sort of built in, whether that be in the home, whether that be, you know, the, the people come in to fix the technology that we're leveraging and enjoying. Right. So, um, this has been awesome. So as we wrap up, you know, I appreciate you. You really did provide a really wonderful overview of how drones are shaping, you know, logistics, safety, agriculture, along with some of the pathways and some of the career specific careers in the field. Um, I would love, you know, as a closing, what advice would you share with our students or adults looking to enter this high demand, uh, future proof career, um, in drones or even other related careers.

Josh Olds: So I think as in any industry cluster, any career for employment, you want to stand out. And in standing out, that means, um, either elevating the credentials you hold. It could mean, um, experiential type of learning. Like you want to be able to prove to your employer that you're teachable, you're trainable. Again, all the soft skills matter. But from a workforce competency and credentialing perspective, level up your experiences through credentialing and certification. For an employer, it is an easy way to say you've been third party validated through proctored certification. It's a way for them to set a standard of um, again, what does an employer want to know? They want to know you can fly and they want to know you can do it safely. Um, because in the world of aviation it's all about risk management and risk transfer. And so when it comes to the drone industry, level up through certification, um, learn everything you can. Again, part 107 is great, but you're competing in a world of over 400,000 part 107s. Now, um, you want to level up experiential and uh, credential based learning. That's what we've been doing in Florida with the, uh, USI certification track through the high schools and the colleges. It's all about developing an ecosystem of very knowledgeable, very competent talent so that we can push the aviation companies in the state of Florida forward and ahead, uh, of the rest of the country. That's what makes Florida so unique, is that we've got such an amazing talent population when it comes to aviation.

Rachel Ludwig: That's excellent. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts and expertise today. I always learned something new from you. I was taking notes throughout our conversation, and we just really appreciate all you do for Florida's workforce and today in the future. Thank you so much.

Josh Olds: No, thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.

Narrator: Awesome. Um, thank you for joining us for today's Future of Work Florida podcast. To find out more about the resources discussed in today's segment, we invite you to visit our website@flchamber.com futureofwork florida. Together, we can champion the future of work and create America's best workforce with right here in Florida. Be sure to subscribe for future content.