Software Using Skills: technical skills involve the ability to use some software to achieve a desired goal. It is worth emphasizing that this set of technical skills concern the application of software to get a desired outcome and not the skill of software development. This including learning to code in new software (for example, macros on Microsoft Excel), use Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools (for example, CATIA), use data engineering tools to operate on data stored in servers (for example SQL), and use software to program and control hardware (for example, the use of Arduino software to program Arduino hardware is a Software Application skill, whereas knowledge of how the Arduino hardware works, as mentioned previously, is regarded as Hardware Knowledge).
Data Engineering/ Analysis Skills: technical skills required to work with data. It particularly focuses on the ability to collect, govern, prepare, transform, and analyze data. Such skills are always closely associated with software application skills as one needs to use different types of software to perform different operations on or with data. Learning a software application skill focuses on the being proficient with using a particular software; on the other hand, learning a data engineering/analysis skill incurs being proficient with handling data, which might require the use a particular software. However, the focal point of such a skill is not on the use of the software, but the ability to operate with the data, which for example, might call for the knowledge of database schemas or statistical techniques to find meaningful information from the given data.
Test Procedures: technical skills involve the learning to effectively perform standardized test procedures on aerospace systems or components of aerospace systems effectively. Such procedures might be standardized by the newcomer’s workgroup or organization or might be an industry-wide standard practice. In line with what was said earlier, the mention of learning test procedures by a newcomer is construed as them learning the skill required to perform the procedure effectively in an industrial context, and not merely the knowledge of the procedure.