--- title: "Techfirst womens Programme" ocid: "ocds-h6vhtk-0668a4" canonical_url: "https://d3tenders.com/contract/?ocid=ocds-h6vhtk-0668a4" markdown_url: "https://d3tenders.com/contract/ocds-h6vhtk-0668a4.md" json_url: "https://d3tenders.com/contract/ocds-h6vhtk-0668a4.json" source: "Find A Tender Service" current_stage: "Planning" buyer: "DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY" published: "2026-03-13" --- # Techfirst womens Programme Buyer: DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY Current stage: Planning OCID: ocds-h6vhtk-0668a4 [View canonical contract page](https://d3tenders.com/contract/?ocid=ocds-h6vhtk-0668a4) [Download OCDS JSON](https://d3tenders.com/contract/ocds-h6vhtk-0668a4.json) ## Summary The Department for Science, Innovation & Technology is in the planning stage of the Techfirst Women's Programme, targeting the digital and frontier technology sectors. This procurement, valued at £4,000,000, is classified under computer-related services (CPV 72500000) and encompasses services aimed at addressing systemic barriers facing women in the tech workforce. The programme's ambition is to increase women's participation, retention, and progression within tech roles across the UK, with a special focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The pre-procurement market engagement runs until 10:00 AM on 20 April 2026, and interested suppliers must register on Jaggaer for access. The project is situated in the UK, with delivery expected to commence by 31 July 2026 and potentially extend until 31 July 2028. This initiative provides significant opportunities for businesses, especially SMEs, offering services in tech training and workforce development. Businesses specializing in digital instruction, workplace readiness training, and mentorship programs would find themselves well-positioned to contribute to this programme. The tender aims to enhance the representation and retention of women in tech roles, thereby providing related industries with a skilled workforce, reduced recruitment costs, and fostering regional innovation. SMEs could benefit from participating in this programme by gaining access to a trained contingent workforce, enabling them to adopt emerging technologies and strengthen their operational capabilities, aiding in their business growth within the digital economy. ## Notice The TechFirst Women's Programme is a UK Government workforce-development intervention designed to increase the participation, retention and progression of women in high-growth digital and frontier-technology sectors. Evidence shows that women remain structurally under-represented across the UK tech workforce, facing systemic barriers including biased recruitment practices, limited access routes, inflexible working patterns, and poor workplace cultures. At the same time, employers--particularly SMEs--are experiencing severe digital skills shortages across key frontier-technology roles, including AI, cyber security, advanced connectivity, semiconductors, quantum technologies and engineering biology. These labour-market failures are constraining innovation, productivity and regional growth, and disproportionately impact businesses unable to access or train technical talent. The programme will procure a women-focused training and deployment model delivering employer-aligned technical instruction, workplace-readiness training, wraparound pastoral support, and structured mentoring. This will enable a target of 300 women to progress into meaningful entry and mid-level roles in frontier-tech sectors. Training will be co-designed with employers to ensure alignment with real occupational needs in areas such as software engineering, cyber security, data engineering, cloud/DevOps, AI/ML operations and telecoms/network engineering. The programme should reduce the cost burden on SMEs, helping them to participate in the digital economy and adopt emerging technologies that would otherwise be inaccessible due to recruitment and training costs. The programme sets a target of 80% demployment into mid-career roles, and 20% deployment into early-career roles. The deployment phase will match participants to paid, high-quality technical roles, with pathway support throughout onboarding and early retention. Delivery partners may deploy a contingent-workforce approach, ensuring employment decisions into permanent roles remain open, merit-based and compliant with the Equality Act 2010. The programme sets a target for 80% of deployments to SMEs, with flexibility where regional or sector-specific SME demand is insufficient. This SME-first approach strengthens regional innovation ecosystems and ensures benefits flow to the parts of the economy facing the most acute hiring barriers. The expected benefits of the programme include increased representation of women in frontier-tech roles; improved retention through structured mentoring and culture-focused employer support; expanded domestic early-career pipelines; enhanced SME digital adoption; and reduced reliance on international recruitment for mid-career tech roles. By addressing systemic inequality and market failure, the TechFirst Women's Programme delivers a targeted, evidence-based intervention that strengthens the UK's technology workforce, boosts regional economic resilience, and supports long-term productivity growth. ### Planning Information Event (PA23 timetable) Date and time Pre-procurement issued 12/03/2026 Pre-procurement closes 10:00 AM 20/04/2026 To access the link, the supplier needs to registered to Jaggaer https://beisgroup.ukp.app.jaggaer.com/go/47964984019CE7EF4C4C ## Key Details | Field | Value | | --- | --- | | Publication source | Find A Tender Service | | Latest notice | https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/023192-2026 | | Notice type | UK2 - Preliminary Market Engagement Notice | | Procurement type | Standard | | Procurement category | Services | | Procurement method | Not Specified | | Procurement method details | Not specified | | Tender suitability | SME | | Awardee scale | Not specified | | All stages | Planning | ## Dates | Field | Value | | --- | --- | | Publication date | 13 Mar 2026 | | Submission deadline | Not specified | | Future notice date | 20 Apr 2026 | | Award date | Not specified | | Contract period | 30 Jul 2026 - 31 Jul 2026 | | Recurrence | Not specified | ## Values | Field | Value | | --- | --- | | Tender value | £3,333,333 | | Lots value | Not specified | | Awards value | Not specified | | Contracts value | Not specified | ## Status | Field | Value | | --- | --- | | Tender status | Planning | | Lots status | Planning | | Awards status | Not specified | | Contracts status | Not specified | ## Buyer | Field | Value | | --- | --- | | Main buyer | DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY | | Locality | LONDON | | Post town | South West London | | Postcode | SW1A 2EG | | Country | England | | ITL 1 | TLI London | | ITL 2 | TLI3 Inner London - West | | ITL 3 | TLI35 Westminster and City of London | | Local authority | Westminster | | Electoral ward | St James's | | Westminster constituency | Cities of London and Westminster | | Delivery location | Not specified | ## CPV Codes ### Divisions - 72 - IT services: consulting, software development, Internet and support ### Codes - 72500000 - Computer-related services ## Release History - 13 Mar 2026 at 16:24 - PlanningUpdate - UK2 - Preliminary Market Engagement Notice - https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/023192-2026 - 12 Mar 2026 at 15:19 - Planning - UK2 - Preliminary Market Engagement Notice - https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/022442-2026 ## Documents - https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/023192-2026 13th March 2026 - Preliminary market engagement notice on Find a Tender - https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/022442-2026 12th March 2026 - Preliminary market engagement notice on Find a Tender ## Notice URLs - https://beisgroup.ukp.app.jaggaer.com/go/47964984019CE7EF4C4C - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/54/contents ## Provenance This Markdown file is an alternate public rendering of the D3 Tenders contract record. The canonical page is https://d3tenders.com/contract/?ocid=ocds-h6vhtk-0668a4. The underlying structured data is available as OCDS JSON at https://d3tenders.com/contract/ocds-h6vhtk-0668a4.json.